Press Release, 17 April- Fuerteventura. From 15th to 17th April, ECVC, a European association of small-farmers that brings together 27 farming bodies from 17 countries across Europe, including outside the EU, held its annual General Assembly in the Canary Islands, Spain. One of the Outermost Regions of the European Union, it is not only where Rafael Hernandez, president of Coag Canarias and outgoing member of the management team, grows his crops but also where Mario Cabrera Gonzales, President of the Government of the Island of Fuerteventura, has declared his intention to develop food sovereignty by promoting local production and autonomy.

This is a goal shared by ECVC, and represents a real challenge at a time when the CAP, currently under reform, has come under attack from agribusiness and defenders of major European farming, who are opposed to any change. The CAP offers little hope to the organisations represented by ECVC despite their considerable contribution to the institutional debate, aimed at defending small and medium-scale farmers, the majority of whom are based in the EU. Poverty and unemployment is exacting a rising toll on citizens as a result of the European crisis, which starkly demonstrates the limits of the liberal dogma at work. We must stop destroying farming jobs and instead enable more rural businesses. Achieving access to quality food for all in Europe requires a large number of farms, sustainable production methods and a physical shift in food supply chains.

Rather than long speeches and matters of protocol, a series of lively debates allowed setting the following strategic axes for the the organisation’s activities over the year ahead :

• Promoting agroecology – which values farmers’ specialist knowledge and contains far more than agronomic techniques – by ensuring that this term is not taken over and robbed of its social aspects.

• Strengthening the Food Sovereignty movement (already composed of many different organisations following the 2011 Forum in Austria) which is working with small-farmers’ organisations to change food supply systems and release them from the stranglehold of the agro-industrial food model that is harmful to our health, the environment and the livelihoods of farmers, as well as the vitality of rural areas. This touches on a number of policy areas such as those relating to trade, where “free” trade agreements threaten the survival of family-based producers.

• Offering support to small- and medium-farmers on all levels, in particular by combating land grabs – which also affect Europe – and supporting rules and regulations that are accessible to small structures (rather than decimating them), by creating suitable channels for the sale of their produce and protecting the use and exchange of traditional small-farming seeds.

The vibrant assembly, which included many young farmers, elected 5 men and 5 women to the coordinating committee, who will take the project forward. Another step forward will be the year for Family Farming, which the UN has declared for 2014, when European Coordination Via Campesina will champion the values and demands of millions of small-farmers who are Family Farming.

An open debate, in the presence of a member of the European Commission and the President of the Government of the Island of Fuerteventura, highlights the future of small farms. In the words of Javier Sanchez, a representative of the ECVC, “We must show that it is we, the farmers, who feed our fellow citizens – and we have the right to receive fair prices and a decent income”. The AG is dedicated to all the victims of peasant struggles.

Contact :

ECVC Spokesperson : Genevieve Savigny : tel 0033625551687

ECVC Contact press : Marzia Rezzin : tel 0032 473300156

Source: http://www.eurovia.org/spip.php?article762&lang=fr

A policy brief by Michel Pimbert.
Modern industrial food, energy and water systems are fundamentally unsustainable. Their linear, and increasingly globalised, structure assumes that the Earth has an endless supply of natural resources at one end, and a limitless capacity to absorb waste and pollution at the other. Our continued reliance on these industrial systems is pushing the world into a vicious cycle of food shortages, climate chaos, famine and disaster. How can we transform our production models for food, energy and water to deliver lower ecological and social footprints? The answer lies in using circular models that mimic natural systems to reduce both external inputs and waste. Case studies from across the world show that circular production systems can and do work for sustainability and equity. But these remain largely isolated examples. Upscaling successful circular systems for food, energy, water and waste management requires policymakers to act on seven fronts.

For more information please visit  http://pubs.iied.org/17133IIED.html

The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) has published the V0 draft of the report  Investing in smallholder agriculture for food and nutrition security  and is currently seeking feedback and inputs to further elaborate the document.
Deadline for the online consultation has been extended until the 30 of January 2013. Contributions are welcomed in English, French and Spanish.

Sustainable agriculture in dry and degraded areas is about the resilience of farmers and ecosystems. With examples from different parts of the world, the latest issue of Farming Matters, shows the importance of local knowledge and appropriate policies. Farming Matters is published by ILEIA quarterly and reaches readers in 172 countries.

International delegates of La Via Campesina gathered in Surin, Thailand, from 6 to 12 November 2012 for the First Global Encounter on Agroecology and Seeds. The objective of the reunion was “to share experience and construct a strategy and vision on agroecology and seeds, in the holistic understanding that both are part of the struggle to achieve food sovereignty.”
In Thailand, small scale farmers are currently pushing toward a shift from an industrial model of agriculture to agroecology with the full support of La Via Campesina movement and that is the reason why this country has been chosen for the meeting.
The Surin Declaration states clearly why Agroecology, as truly sustainable peasants agriculture based on traditional knowledge, is considered the corner stone of food sovereignty, as well as an intrinsic part of the global answer to the main challenges and crises we face as humanity. You can read it the full text of the Surin Declaration here.

La Via Campesina website: http://viacampesina.org/en/

A presentation written by Miguel Altieri, Professor of Agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, with the participation of Angela Hilmi. You can choose to download the short or the long version; both of them are in Power Point format and available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

A new 30-minute film produced by The Gaia Foundation and the Africa Biodiversity Network, in collaboration with MELCA Ethiopia, Navdanya International and GRAIN.

Narrated by actor Jeremy Irons, Seeds of Freedom is set to explode pervasive myths about agriculture, development and Africa’s ability to feed herself. At the heart of the film the story of seed and its transformation from the basis of farming communities’ agri-culture, to the property of agri-business.

by Aksel Naerstad
International co-coordinator of the More and Better Network

Small scale food producers produce 70% of the total global food production according to United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)[1] and the well acknowledged international organization ETC-group There are, however, no exact figures of how much food which is produced by different kind of food producers. Neither is there a clear definition of who are the small scale food producers or a distinct definition of industrial food production. There are for instance four different definition of family agriculture in Brazil, based on regional differences. A farm of 50 ha in Argentina is considered small, and a farm of 5 ha is considered a large farm in many countries in Asia.[2] In many reports small farms are categorized as farms with less than 2 hectares of land, but some propose to categorize all farms of less than 10 hectares as small.

Some figures
In the report Who will feed us? [3] ETC-group estimates, based on different sources, that small scale farmers / peasants produce 50% of the global food production; small scale food producers in the cities produce 7,5%; hunting, fishing and other forms of gathering and harvesting from nature counts for about 12,5%; and that the industrial food production produce about 30% of the total global food production.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Global Report,[4] gives also an estimate of how much of the food is being produced by small scale food producers. The figures in the report are based on FAO data from 525 million farms all over the world. 90% of these farms are small farms, defined as farms with less than 2 hectares of land, and they contribute substantially to the global food production. The IAASTD-report highlights that in Africa 90% of the agricultural production comes from these small farms.

FAO (2010) 2000 World Census of Agriculture has statistics from 84 countries with a total of 436 million farms, which is 83% on all farms in the world, based on the figures in IAASTD. 85% of the farms in the census are small farms – calculated on the basis of farms less than 2 hectares for all countries and territories, except for Uruguay, USA and New Zealand where the statics are on less than 5 hectares.
FAO has estimated that about 15% of the annual consumption of food by peasants and their families in rural areas in developing countries come from areas which are not cultivated,[5] and that 75-90% of all staple food is produced and consumed locally.[6]

Food First published in 2008 an article from M. Altieri[7] with the following figures:
“At present, small farms (2 hectares and less) produce the majority of staple crops for urban and rural inhabitants across the world – in Latin America 17 million peasant farms produce 51 percent of the maize, 77 percent of the beans, and 61 percent of the potatoes consumed domestically; 33 million small (mostly female– run) farms in Africa, representing 80 per­cent of the farms, produce a ‘significant amount of basic food crops with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed;’ and in Asia most of the rice consumed is produced by more than 200 million small farmers”.

Worldwatch Institute estimates that urban agriculture produce 15-20% of all food in the world.4 Other institutes use similar figures, but the studies do not cover the whole world. FAO estimate that urban agriculture provides the food for about 700 million people. [8]

In an article by 16 scientists in the well acknowledged magazine Science in 2010 [9] they state that two third of the global population is linked to a kind of mixt crop-livestock systems, mainly small farms with less than 2 hectare of land;
“According to the CGIAR analysis, the world’s one billion poor people (those living on less than $1 a day) are fed primarily by hundreds of millions of small-holder farmers (most with less than 2 ha of land, several crops, and perhaps a cow or two) and herders (most with fewer than five large animals) in Africa and Asia (3). Furthermore, mixed crop-livestock systems could be the key to future food security; two-thirds of the global population already live in these systems, and much of the future population growth will occur there. Already, mixed systems produce close to 50% of the world’s cereals and most of the staples consumed by poor people: 41% of maize, 86% of rice, 66% of sorghum, and 74% of millet production (3). They also generate the bulk of livestock products in the developing world, that is, 75% of the milk and 60% of the meat, and employ many millions of people in farms, formal and informal markets, processing plants, and other parts of long value chains (3).”[10]

The Norwegian government states in the budget proposal for 2012 that small-scale farmers produce 80% of the food in developing countries.[11] This means that peasants in developing countries produce the food for 65% of the population in the world, if we keep export and import out of the picture. Even if import of food is important for many countries, also for developing countries, is the share of the food which crosses borders only about 10% of the total food production.[12]

The President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is also using the same figure; that small scale farmers in developing countries produce 80% of the food in developing countries.[13]

I would like to underline that none of the figures above are accurate. There is a need for better statistics, but there are many more sources than used in this article which have similar figures. Some people have challenged the figures above, and said that industrial food produce most of the food in the world. I have not been able to find any sources or references which tell that.
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