Happy International Day of Family Farming

  International Day of Family Farming

Poverty and hunger remain the biggest development challenges of our time.

The International Day of Family Farming is celebrated on July 25th each year. This day highlights the crucial role that family farmers play in ensuring food security, preserving traditional food products, and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. Family farming is essential for maintaining biodiversity, managing natural resources, and supporting rural communities.

World Family Farmer Day is part of the broader UN Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028), which aims to highlight the crucial role family farmers play in eradicating hunger and shaping the future of food. Family farming is essential for ensuring food security, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, and achieving sustainable development, especially in rural areas.

Family farmers produce over 80% of the world’s food and occupy around 70-80% of farmland globally. They are key to preserving traditional food products, contributing to a balanced diet, and safeguarding agro-biodiversity.

Shaping the future of food and agriculture

Improving agricultural performance

Starvation in Africa is now believed to be the most serious problem of all. Different sources say that every year hunger kills more people than diseases such as COVID-19, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined all together. Many of those people are kids who die at very young age because of lack of food. The situation is very serious and African continent is in a grave danger. Hunger became a grim reaper who takes away countless numbers of lives each and every day.

Poverty seems to be the most important factor. Many African families simply do not have enough money to buy food. As a result, parents and children are starving and the state is not concerned with their situation.

Agriculture in Africa is expected to meet the dual objectives of providing food and helping people to escape poverty. African agriculture is dominated by smallholdings and donors generally target their agricultural support at the smallholder sector.

The expectation is that if the gap between actual and potential yields can be closed, smallholders will grow sufficient crops to feed their families, with a surplus to sell, thus meeting food security needs and bringing in an income to move them out of poverty. In practice, this is often not possible.

Hunger facts

There are many different causes of hunger but most common are: poverty, environment, harmful economic systems, conflicts, and rapid population growth.

Environment is another problematic issue. People have to face erosion, desertification, deforestation, and of course droughts and water shortages. The agricultural production is sometimes extremely reduced. This reduction has a direct effect on hunger increase.

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