José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on the role of family farms for global food security, the need for sound rural development stategies and the responsibility of governments, the private sector and civil society.

Livestock are kept for a wide range of purposes in Africa, and there is considerable diversity in animal husbandry. Among the most important advantages in keeping animals is their contribution to maintaining and even improving soil fertility. Furthermore, animal husbandry offers economic, social and cultural benefits. However, the authors also look at the constraints that smallholders face in livestock husbandry.

Despite good potential for food production, South Sudan’s agriculture is not feeding its population. The impacts of decades of armed conflict are posing enormous challenges for the sector. Farmer Field Schools seem to be a promising instrument to improve food security and livelihoods of small-scale farmers in the country.

In a world of rapidly changing conditions, enhancing the adaptability and hence the resilience of family farms is crucial to their viability. Here, diversity plays an important role, as the following article demonstrates.

Nowadays it is hard to imagine European livestock production without soya-based feed. But this trend has had a massive impact on rural areas in the global South – the bulk of the soya fed to livestock in Europe is imported from Argentina and Brazil. That is not sustainable, says WWF’s Birgit Wilhelm, who advocates a change in mindset.

Family farming has many different meanings to many different people. While such farms come in all shape and sizes, one thing all practitioners agree on is that family farming is more than a business – it’s a way of life. The following article shows what constitutes this way of life, the challenges that family farms in Europe and throughout the world face and why and how the European Union supports this type of enterprise.

Tropical forage grasses and legumes as key components of sustainable crop-livestock systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have major implications for improving food security, alleviating poverty, restoring degraded lands and mitigating climate change. Climate-smart tropical forage crops can improve the livestock productivity of smallholder farming systems and break the cycle of poverty and resource degradation.

Improving watershed conservation and household food security has been one of the major development challenges in the semi-arid areas of northern Ethiopia. The initial survey by ILRI’s Improving Productivity and Marketing Success project has revealed that physical conservation measures alone do not result in higher farmers’ income. However, the introduction of market-oriented commodity development such as beekeeping, sheep-fattening, and high value crops resulted in farmers’ income rising fivefold from 2005 to 2009.

Family farms are often associated with greater sustainability. But the definition of sustainability is a highly disputable topic. The School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL) in Switzerland has developed a method enabling a more objective evaluation of sustainability in agriculture. Response-Inducing Sustainability Evaluation (RISE) covers ten sustainability indicators and supplies the foundation for agricultural advice.

Converting from subsistence to market-oriented farming can increase income. Thanks to the ’Enabling Rural Innovation’ approach, family farmers in Uganda and Tanzania have succeeded in improving production and fetching better prices for their produce while safeguarding food security and sustainable management of natural resources. The recipe for success is that farmers take the development process in their own hands.

Zimbabwe used to be well-known for its high-quality meat exports. The sector was hard hit by the economic crisis that set in during the 1990s and coincided with the impact of a failed land reform and recurrent drought. Now, a new livestock-fattening scheme is to contribute to the survival of the branch and help resource-poor smallholders earn a living by marketing their meat.

Zambia’s small-scale farmers are even poorer today than they were 40 years ago. According to the 2010 Human Development Report, Zambia is one of just three nations whose development has fallen behind 1970 levels. And yet Zambia is one of Africa’s “lion states” with annual economic growth rates of more than 5 percent. It is not easy to explain such a contradiction, but a DIE study is drawing closer to ? nding an answer.