This content was published on December 6, 2022 – 00:58 December 6, 2022 – 12:58
Santiago de Chile, 6 December (EFE).- States and governments must take public action to facilitate family farming, an essential sector for the global economy and a key in the fight against poverty, the climate emergency and food insecurity that threatens millions of people the planet, Mario Lubetkin, FAO regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, warned today.
In an exclusive interview with EFE, the Uruguayan manager, who took office in August, stressed that the results show that family farming has “an extraordinary ability to multiply, to rationalize and, perhaps better than other forms of exploitation, a future one to preserve sustainability”.
“Agriculture is showing high resilience, especially in light of recent events. The agricultural sector was generally the one that shrank the least in 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean countries, with growth seen even in countries like Paraguay, Colombia , Brazil, Bolivia and Panama”.
On a global scale, he explained, “Family farming represents more than 90% of agricultural exports, occupies almost 75% of agricultural land and produces more than 80% of food by value.”
“If we only focus on Latin America, 81% of farms are family farms,” he added.
MORE PUBLIC POLITICS
In a context where the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have pushed up prices and made logistics more difficult, Lubeckin advocates for greater state involvement through public policies that favor small farmers.
It also calls for greater integration, allowing different countries to share the positive experiences they have had during times of the pandemic.
“Our challenge is to help (small farmers) create bigger confluences and better conditions for them and their work. It is clear that a single family producer does not have the power to obtain new credit (or access to technological advances) as a recipient of something that large corporations already have,” he says.
FOOD INSECURITY
Lubetkin gives the example of cocoa production. According to them, family farming is responsible for 31.6% of production in Colombia and 60% of production in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.
But he warns that 80% of the poor and food insecure live mostly in rural areas devoted to family farming, and only 15% of these small producers have access to technical assistance, preventing modernization from slowing down Development and innovation of crops and promotes the abandonment of fields.
“Without innovation, without digitization, without technology, no economic investment that leads to a substantial change in quality is possible,” he complains.
“Only 12% of family farmers in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru receive important credit lines related to development capacities,” he specifies.
“If we add to this the increase in food prices and the increase in input prices, and we limit ourselves to the question of fertilizers, on which Latin America and the Caribbean depend for 85%, the results are clear: the affected producer immediately enters the poverty line” , he emphasizes.
POSITIVE STEPS
However, Lubetkin points out that Latin American countries are at the forefront of those paying more attention to family farming.
According to him, “almost 50% of the plans approved worldwide belong to Latin American countries”.
“Nine countries have specific policies or strategies to support family farming and 12 countries have included family farming in their public procurement system,” he adds.
What FAO is doing, he concludes, “is trying to bring good ideas together from across Latin America to try to find a common path.” EFE
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