Public policies for family farming – when done appropriately – provide a perfect match between different policy areas related to productive, economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions of sustainable food systems. The Learning framework for inclusive, integrated and innovative public policy cycles for family farming was developed under the framework of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019–2028) to support policymakers, family farmers’ organizations and other relevant stakeholders to increase their understanding of public policy cycles and family farming related policies. This technical and methodological capacity development programme is adaptable to local, national or regional priorities. It offers a holistic perspective to building knowledge and capacity of the various actors involved in the design, implementation and review of effective and coherent policies and programmes. This learning framework responds to the needs of multiple actors, expressed during the UNDFF pre-consultation process, to identify ways to create truly effective and efficient policy frameworks for family farming, and to better engage and participate during policy processes. To provide an appropriate answer to these needs the learning framework was designed through a participatory process building on the experience of governments and family farmers’ organizations, researchers and UN staff, gathering inputs from all relevant actors around the world.

The Regional Action Plan for strengthening family farming in South Asia has been elaborated through a participatory and multi-stakeholder approach in the framework of the UN Decade of Family Farming and in close collaboration with SAARC Agriculture Center, the Asia Farmer Association for Sustainable Rural Development and the International Cooperative Alliance – Asia Pacific. Consultations with farmers’ organizations, cooperatives and other relevant stakeholders at country level first helped identifying and prioritizing key interventions for the region along the seven pillars of the Global Action Plan. These initial inputs then contributed to the overall drafting of the contextualized pillars led by recognized experts from the region. The draft pillars were presented during a first regional virtual consultation on UN Decade of Family Farming: Formulating Strategies and Action Plan to Strengthen Smallholder Family Farmers in South Asia held on the 5–6 November 2020. A follow up regional consultation meeting on review and finalization of the Regional Action Plan for strengthening family farming in South Asia was then organized on 29 July 2021. The objective was to present, discuss and validate the draft Regional Action Plan for strengthening family farming in South Asia. This Regional Action Plan aims at facilitating and accelerating the process of developing national action plans through inclusive multi-stakeholder processes, not only putting family farmers at the centre but recognizing them as critical partners.

This first International Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers called for inclusive research and education systems to facilitate innovation; robust bridging institutions; support to family farmers; and integrated policies and increased investments to create an enabling environment for innovation and scaling up. Innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context. Innovation in agriculture cuts across all dimensions of the production cycle along the entire value chain - from crop, forestry, fishery or livestock production to the management of inputs and resources to market access. The symposium provided inspiration for innovation actors and decision makers to unlock the potential of innovation to drive socio-economic growth, ensure food and nutrition security, alleviate poverty, improve resilience to changing environments and thereby achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The purpose of the FAO’s framework is to guide the Organization and its personnel in the integration of measures addressing child labour within FAO’s typical work, programmes and initiatives at global, regional and country levels. It aims to enhance compliance with organization’s operational standards, and strengthen coherence and synergies across the Organization and with partners. The FAO framework is primarily targeted at FAO as an organization, including all personnel in all geographic locations. But the framework is also relevant for FAO’s governing bodies and Member States, and provides guidance and a basis for collaboration with development partners. The framework is also to be used as a key guidance to assess and monitor compliance with FAO’s environmental and social standards addressing prevention and reduction of child labour in FAO’s programming.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of agrifood systems to shocks and stresses and led to increased global food insecurity and malnutrition. Action is needed to make agrifood systems more resilient, efficient, sustainable and inclusive. The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 presents country-level indicators of the resilience of agrifood systems. The indicators measure the robustness of primary production and food availability, as well as physical and economic access to food. They can thus help assess the capacity of national agrifood systems to absorb shocks and stresses, a key aspect of resilience. The report analyses the vulnerabilities of food supply chains and how rural households cope with risks and shocks. It discusses options to minimize trade-offs that building resilience may have with efficiency and inclusivity. The aim is to offer guidance on policies to enhance food supply chain resilience, support livelihoods in the agrifood system and, in the face of disruption, ensure sustainable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to all.

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.

The Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) Guidelines were developed for assessing the impact of food and agriculture operations on the environment and people. The guiding vision of SAFA is that food and agriculture systems worldwide are characterized by all four dimensions of sustainability: good governance, environmental integrity, economic resilience and social well-being.

Using sustainable food value chain development (SFVCD) approaches to reduce poverty presents both great opportunities and daunting challenges. SFVCD requires a systems approach to identifying root problems, innovative thinking to find effective solutions and broad-based partnerships to implement programmes that have an impact at scale. In practice, however, a misunderstanding of its fundamental nature can easily result in value-chain projects having limited or non-sustainable impact. Furthermore, development practitioners around the world are learning valuable lessons from both failures and successes, but many of these are not well disseminated. This new set of handbooks aims to address these gaps by providing practical guidance on SFVCD to a target audience of policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners. This first handbook provides a solid conceptual foundation on which to build the subsequent handbooks. It (1) clearly defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain; (2) presents and discusses a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added; (3) presents, discusses and illustrates ten principles that underlie SFVCD; and (4) discusses the potential and limitations of using the value-chain concept in food-systems development. By doing so, the handbook makes a strong case for placing SFVCD at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

This book analyzes how international organizations and the European Union engage with civil society to pursue their policy goals. Multi-stakeholder initiatives, private-public partnership, sub-contracting, political alliances, hybrid coalitions, multi-sectoral networks, pluralist co-governance, and indeed foreign policy by proxy are all considered. Bringing together the most advanced scholarship, the book examines trade, environment, development, security, and human rights with reference to both EU and global institutional settings such as the WTO, UN Climate Summits, FAO, IFAD, ICC, UNHRC, UNSC, and at the EU level the DG FISMA, TRADE, CLIMA, DEVCO, HOME and ECHO. The book also studies the use of NGOs in the foreign policy of the EU, USA, and Russia. This changing politics and the polarized debate it has generated are explored in detail.

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