Farming Matters - Education for change

All too often, education in rural areas serves to disconnect and estrange rural people from their own culture and environment, and increases the gap between rural and urban settings. Yet education can be a powerful tool for developing skills, strengthening the value attached to farming, supporting young rural people in their search for identity and future opportunities, and contributing towards a more sustainable and just agriculture. Education needs to be better connected to rural realities and the enormous potential that family farming has in addressing the pressing challenges facing the world today. The initiatives highlighted in this issue, even if small in scale, are all building towards this.

Farming Matters

Farming Matters | September 2012
Farmers’ organisations can play important roles in developing supply management schemes and various income insurance programmes. Farmers can learn from each other, about production, marketing, rights, etc., and join a platform to learn about others’ experiences.
As a group, farmers can exercise more political pressure for change. Yet, even though there are many potential benefits for small-scale farmers who become organised, the logistics and governance of farming organisations can be problematic. Farmer organisations do not automatically benefit everyone in the community: are they, for example, open to everyone, including female farmers?
This issue of Farming Matters pays special attention to farmers’ organisations. In what different ways do farmers organise? What problems exist in farmers’ organisations and how are these dealt with?
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Farming Matters - From farmers’ fields to Rio+20

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro provides a good opportunity to review the viability and success of family farming and agro-ecology. The special Rio+20 edition of our network's magazines is ready, and already being distributed. In terms of food security or climate change, agro-ecology works!

Many debates took place in Rio. The presence and participation of thousands of people at the UN conference and at the parallel meetings has triggered a tremendous stream of information about small-scale family farming and agro-ecology; many ideas are being presented and discussed.

Building on more than 25 years of information shared with readers all over the world, this issue of our magazines provides an overview of the importance of small-scale farming and of an agro-ecological approach to agriculture, paying special attention to the key thematic areas identified by the authors of the Zero Draft: food security, poverty alleviation, energy and climate change. It shows a variety of examples of how family farmers have been practicing a type of agriculture that is not only sustainable, but essential for a green planet and a healthy population. The articles in this issue show the need for scaling-up these approaches, and what could be the steps in the process.

 FARMING MATTERS 28.2 - English: Read | Download | Preview