On Tuesday 15 October 2024, during the Global Family Farming Forum held at FAO headquarters in Rome the secretariat team of the World Agricultural Watch (WAW) - FAO, NSL Division- presented the newly published WAW operational guidelines, reaffirming WAW as an essential component of data collection and analysis efforts that reflect the diversity of family farms.

Marie-Christine Monnier, the WAW coordinator, began by describing the importance of providing reliable data at farm level to qualify their diversity and push for public policies that recognize the importance of small-scale farming for food security and sustainable agrifood systems. The operational guidelines provide stakeholders involved in agriculture policies at various levels a common framework for defining the diversity and monitoring the structural transformations of global agriculture. The WAW harmonized analytical framework encompasses sustainable rural livelihoods, landscape and territory approaches to assess family farms based on structure, functioning and performance at production system and household level. 

Consequently, typologies are produced to effectively use agriculture data, issued from agricultural census or from ad hoc surveys,  as a guide to investment and policy development. Antoine Lemaitre presented recent WAW-based farms typologies carried out in Tunisia and Senegal. The study done in the cereal production area of Jendouba, Northwest of Tunisia, compared the characteristics of family farms, employer families, and special-status farms. Among family farms ss, which are the most numerous 8 different types have been identified according to their access to irrigation and combinations of productions. Their performance depend more of the level of diversification and choice of sustainable cropping practices than of cultivated area.  Senegal's study, focused on the description of agriculture around the secondary city of Kaffrine,  examined farming systems, assessed living conditions and performance of farm households, and classified farms according to their environment: urban, peri-urban, or rural. 

The presentation was presented in French and gave an opportunity for constructive discussion on the methodological support provided by the WAW initiative halfway through the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 (UNDFF).