Mountain Farming is Family Farming


Book Description

This publication, featuring 25 case studies from across the mountain landscapes, gives an overview of the global changes affecting mountain farming and the strategies that mountain communities have developed to cope. Each study also presents a set of lessons and recommendations, meant to inform and benefit mountain communities, policy-makers, development experts and academics who work to support mountain farmers and to protect mountains.




The Future of Mountain Agriculture


Book Description

Mountain agriculture is a socially and culturally unique system, but also a regionally important economic sector. In a globalising world, it is clear that fertile areas on all continents will always be used to produce large quantities of agricultural products in order to feed the world and, increasingly, provide biomass as a source of energy. It is far less clear, however, how land use in steep and more peripheral regions will evolve. By definition, farmland in mountain areas is more difficult to work because of steep slopes and missing accessibility. Climate conditions and poor soil quality often add to these adverse conditions. Through overcoming limited views from one region only or from one discipline, this book intends to draw a first truly international perspective on the issue of mountain farming.




Mountain farming systems – Seeds for the future


Book Description

This publication presents a collection of case studies by Mountain Partnership (MP) members from around the world, highlighting experiences of agroecological mountain farming systems. It aims to increase attention toward agroecological principles and approaches and showcase their potential. The MP, the only United Nations global voluntary alliance dedicated to sustainable mountain development, is fully committed to promoting actions that can improve the resilience of mountain people and environments. In mountains, the practice of agroecology and the conservation of agrobiodiversity results in more resilient agricultural and food systems. Sustainable mountain farming systems can drive progress towards reducing rural poverty, contributing to zero hunger, and ensuring the resilience of mountain communities while maintaining the provision of global ecosystem services, especially those related to water. Food security in mountains is a matter of concern. Through adequate and coordinated pro-mountain policies, investments, capacity development, services, and infrastructures, as well as efforts to provide smallholders and family farmers with access to innovation, mountain farming systems have the potential to become pathways for change. In doing so, they can provide valuable support and impetus to the transition to sustainable food systems, contributing to revitalizing rural areas and lifting mountain peoples out of poverty and hunger, while protecting fragile mountain environments for the future.




Gaining Ground


Book Description

With humor and pathos, Forrest Pritchard recounts his ambitious and often hilarious endeavors to save his family’s seventh-generation farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Through many a trial and error, he not only saves Smith Meadows from insolvency but turns it into a leading light in the sustainable, grass-fed, organic farm-to-market community. There is nothing young Farmer Pritchard won’t try. Whether he’s selling firewood and straw, raising free-range chickens and hogs, or acquiring a flock of Barbados Blackbelly sheep, his learning curve is steep and always entertaining. Pritchard’s world crackles with colorful local characters—farm hands, butchers, market managers, customers, fellow vendors, pet goats, policemen—bringing the story to warm, communal life. His most important ally, however, is his renegade father, who initially questions his son's career choice and eschews organic foods for the generic kinds that wreak havoc on his health. Soon after his father’s death, the farm becomes a recognized success and Pritchard must make a vital decision: to continue serving the local community or answer the exploding demand for his wares with lucrative Internet sales and shipping deals. More than a charming story of honest food cultivation and farmers’ markets, Gaining Ground tugs on the heartstrings, reconnecting us to the land and the many lives that feed us.




Mountain agriculture: Opportunities for harnessing Zero Hunger in Asia


Book Description

Mountain food security and nutrition are core issues that can contribute positively to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals but paradoxically are often ignored in Zero Hunger and poverty reduction-related agenda. Under the overall leadership of José Graziano da Silva, the Former Director-General of FAO, sustainable mountain agriculture development is set as a priority in Asia and the Pacific, to effectively address this issue and assist Member Countries in tackling food insecurity and malnutrition in mountain regions. This comprehensive publication is the first of its kind that focuses on the multidimensional status, challenges, opportunities and solutions of sustainable mountain agriculture development for Zero Hunger in Asia. This publication is building on the ‘International Workshop and Regional Expert Consultation on Mountain Agriculture Development and Food Security and Nutrition Governance’, held by FAO RAP and UIR in November 2018 Beijing, in collaboration with partners from national governments, national agriculture institutes, universities, international organizations and international research institutes. The publication provides analysis with evidence on how mountain agriculture could contribute to satisfying all four dimensions of food security, to transform food systems to be nutrition-sensitive, climate-resilient, economically-viable and locally adaptable. From this food system perspective, the priority should be given to focus on specialty mountain product identification (e.g. Future Smart Food), production, processing, marketing and consumption, which would effectively expose the potential of mountain agriculture to contribute to Zero Hunger and poverty reduction. In addition, eight Asian country case studies not only identify context-specific challenges within biophysical-technical, policy, socio-economic and institutional dimensions.




Diversity of Family Farming Around the World


Book Description

This book aims at explaining the nature and strength of the links between the families and their farms looking at their diversity throughout the world. To do so, it documents family farming diversity by using the sustainable rural livelihood (SRL) framework exploring their ability to adapt and transform to changing environments. In 18 case studies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, it shows how family farms resist under adverse conditions, seize new opportunities and permanently transform. Family farms, far from being backwards are potential solutions to face the current challenges and shape a new future for agriculture taking advantage of their local knowledge and capacity to cope with external constraints. Many co-authors of the book have both an empirical and theoretical experience of family farming in developed and developing countries and their related institutions. They specify «what makes and means family» in family farming and the diversity of their expertise draws a wide and original picture of this resilient way of farming throughout the world.




The Market Gardener


Book Description

Grow better not bigger with proven low-tech, human-scale, biointensive farming methods Making a living wage farming without big capital outlay or acreages may be closer than you think. Growing on just 1.5 acres, Jean-Martin and Maude-Helene feed more than 200 families through their thriving CSA and seasonal market stands. The secret of their success is the low-tech, high-yield production methods they've developed by focusing on growing better rather than growing bigger, making their operation more lucrative and viable in the process. The Market Gardener is a compendium of proven horticultural techniques and innovative growing methods. This complete guide is packed with practical information on: Setting-up a micro-farm by designing biologically intensive cropping systems, all with negligible capital outlay; Farming without a tractor and minimizing fossil fuel inputs through the use of the best hand tools, appropriate machinery and minimum tillage practices; Growing mixed vegetables systematically with attention to weed and pest management, crop yields, harvest periods and pricing approaches. Inspired by the French intensive tradition of maraichage and by iconic American vegetable grower Eliot Coleman, author and farmer Jean-Martin shows by example how to start a market garden and make it both very productive and profitable.




SMALL-SCALE FAMILY FARMING IN THE NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA REGION


Book Description

This report provides an overview of a study conducted in the NENA region in 2015-2016 in partnership with FAO, CIRAD, CIHEAM-IAMM and six national teams, each of which prepared a national report. In the six countries under review in the NENA region (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan and Tunisia), agriculture is carried out primarily by small-scale family farmers, the majority of whom run the risk of falling into the poverty trap, largely due to the continuous fragmentation of inherited landholdings. As such, the development of small-scale family farming can no longer be based solely on intensifying agriculture, as the farmers are not able to produce sufficient marketable surplus due to the limited size of their landholdings. An approach based strictly on agricultural activity is also insufficient (as small-scale family farms have already diversified their livelihoods with off-farm activities). In fact, developing small-scale farming cannot be achieved by focusing strictly on t he dimension of production.




Farming Systems and Poverty


Book Description

A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.