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Dealing with the uncertainties of changing climates is a challenge faced by farmers around the world. Near Cochabamba in Bolivia’s Andean high plateau, a group of agroecological farmers are leading the way by developing and sharing innovative practices that help their communities break out of the vicious cycle of increased poverty and vulnerability. But challenges remain…

Interview > Cantave Jean-Baptiste is a Haitian agronomist and rural development practitioner with more than three decades of experience supporting sustainable agriculture and strengthening peasant organisations. He is Executive Director of Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL) in Haiti, and a founding member of Groundswell International. Farming Matters asked Mr Jean-Baptiste how family farmers can build resilience in Haiti, a country where an estimated 80% of the population lives in poverty.

Mainstream education has caused difficulties for the youth of northern Thailand in reaching their dreams. In most cases, they are forced to take exorbitant student loans which brings their families in poorer conditions.

This video proposes an alternative to mainstream education by home schooling the youth and teaching them the sustainable way of living. They are taught to live in a sufficiency economy model, consuming what they only need and driving themselves away from greed.

Manor House Agricultural Center provides training in low input farming as an alternative to conventional methods, which are heavily reliant on external inputs. Farmers practicing biointensive farming techniques experience significant yield increases and improved soil fertility and grow more nutritious crops. Since 1984, over 100,000 farmers have received this training, and an estimated 200,000 households now use methods of biointensive agriculture.

The area around Wum in the Northwest Province of Cameroon is notorious as a conflict hotspot. As pressure increases on available land, conflicts occur more frequently between sedentary family farmers and pastoral communities. Farmer-pastoralist alliances are helping to resolve the conflicts by transforming the relationships between these families.

About 23 years ago, in Santiago del Estero, a province in the north of Argentina, the Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero Via Campesina (MOCASE -VC) was established. One of its leaders is Deo Sumaj, an impressive peasant woman of the Vilela indigenous people. “Peasant family farming could provide many answers to the crises that humanity faces.”

After the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, former land owners returned to Nicaragua from the USA. They began to take back their former estates through legal and less than legal manoeuvering, driving many rural people off the land they had been cultivating. This ‘agrarian counter-reform’ as it became known, left many hundreds of people landless in its wake during the 1990s and early 2000s. Now a national union has adopted agroecology and is leading the way for peasant farmers to collectively work their way out of poverty and towards a more resilient model of agriculture.

Family farmers and the many ways in which they contribute to food security, healthy landscapes and thriving rural communities can be supported in a number of ways. These are some initiatives from around the world.

Some may view indigenous communities as being conservative and backwards. However, the Kabekwa in Costa Rica show that such communities can be adaptable and innovative. Read more