The UN General Assembly declared 2014 to be the International Year of Family Farming and invited the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to facilitate implementation of the International Year, in collaboration with its partners.

Among its other initiatives for the International Year, FAO has worked with the Global Forum on Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) in setting the spotlight on rural advisory services for family farms. This has been done by jointly organizing two recent side events on the topic – in Buenos Aires on 26 September 2014 during the 5th GFRAS Annual Meeting and in Rome on 27 October 2014 during the Global Dialogue on Family Farming. To continue and expand the dialogue to a global audience, the FAO Research and Extension Unit hosted an e-mail conference on “Tailoring rural advisory services to family farms” which will allow participants to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences on this topic. The conference took place 1-18 December 2014. Results of the two side events and the e-mail conference will feed into preparations of a document on policies to enhance rural advisory services for family farms that FAO and GFRAS are planning to publish in 2015.

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(Photo shows a pearl millet farmer family in India. Copyright C.T. Hash)