Year of Family Farming

Celebrating food is a typically human activity, so what better way to do so than with the International Year of Family Farming? The year 2014 has been declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to highlight the enormous role that family farms play in the world’s food production.

The main thrust of the International Year of Family Farming is to promote a sustainable and environmentally friendly development of the over 500 million family farms throughout the world. In this context, the family is a term that encompasses familial groups, indigenous clusters, and neighbourhood cooperatives, whether they farm crops, livestock or marine creatures.

The majority of family farmers lack access to lines of credit, technology, and resources. The International Year of Family Farmer aims to raise awareness of this fact in governments, whether they be national or provincial, farming organisations and other interested bodies.