FAO is organizing an email conference on “The Role of Small Farms Within a Larger Context of Food Security” from 19 March to 9 April 2018.
Why?
This e-conference is intended to provide further feedback on what has been learned so far from the work in the EU-funded Horizon 2020 research project on “Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security”, commonly known as SALSA project (see more background on the project below).
The e-conference will help identifying key knowledge gaps, as well as to share examples that will contribute to build the SALSA empirical base. Using this second e-conference, the SALSA team wants to catalyse and foster an ongoing dialogue with relevant stakeholders.
This is the second e-conference carried out within the SALSA project. The previous e-conference took place in October 2016. 462 participants provided a total of 99 contributions, which result in a significant input to the SALSA project. More information on the first e-conference, the main input and summary can be found here.
Who is expected to participate?
The virtual discussion is intended to draw the attention of researchers, educators, students and a wide spectrum of food chain/food system actors and entrepreneurs, as well as policy makers and administrators at multiple levels, on the role of small farms within a larger context.
The e-conference is also open to all who wish to share their insights and discuss “The Role of Small Farms Within a Larger Context of Food Security”.
While the participation in the e-conference remains free and voluntary, all participants are encouraged to actively contribute with their experiences.
How to participate?
If you wish to join the e-conference, please send an email to AIS@fao.org, specifying:
- Your email address to be registered on the list.
- Full name, organisation, institute or company you work for, and your position (or simply note “private” if you want to participate on their own behalf).
Please feel free and encouraged to engage your colleagues or anyone in your professional network to take part in this e-conference.
What? The e-conference’s overarching topics
The e-conference will focus on six specific topics:
#1: Cooperation among small farms
#2: Small farms’ contribution to resilience of the food system
#3: Strategies used by small farms to overcome challenges – a view of the past
#4: How small farms address future challenges?
#5: The importance of food businesses to small farms
#6: How can policies affect small farm activities and their resilience?
When?
The e-conference will run from 19 March to 9 April 2018, with weekly summaries posted by the moderator to recap main points and stimulate further dialogue.
How is the e-conference organized?
The e-conference is a virtual discussion linking up the participants via a central email distribution server. Participants send input and engage in online discussions via email, facilitated by a moderator.
This means participants can provide their input at any time convenient to them during the e-conference period. All contributions will be distributed to the e-conference participants, via the email conference server.
Background document
The full background information and detailed topic questions can be found in this background document. It will guide you to further contextualize the discussions, and to understand the basic guidelines to contribute to the e-conference.
About the SALSA Project
The project “Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security” (SALSA project) aims to provide a better understanding of the current and potential contribution of small farms and food businesses to sustainable food and nutrition security. Supported by the EU-funded Horizon 2020 program, a coalition of 16 European and African partners are collaborating in assessing the role of small farms and small food businesses in delivering a sustainable and secure supply of affordable, nutritious and culturally adequate food.
The SALSA project began in April 2016 and runs for 48 months. In the project the partners have adopted a novel, transdisciplinary, multi-scale approach across 30 regions in Europe and Africa that builds on and connects relevant theoretical and analytic frameworks within a food system approach. Using this perspective, the project is looking beyond production capacity, and investigating food security in terms of the availability of nutritious and safe food, food access and control (including affordability), food utilisation, and food stability.
FAO is a Partner in GFAR. The aims of SALSA align with the aims of actions within GFAR’s Key Focus Area: Communities determining their own needs. Assessing the research and innovation needs of Family and Small Farmers towards a food and nutrition secure future is a GFAR Collective Action contributing to the International Decade on Family Farming and Sustainable Development Goal 2.
Photo Credit: ©FAO/Mark Milstein
blog.gfar.net 
The Role of Small Farms Within a Larger Context of Food Security is the best alternative for land scarcity. Small land, enough food production.
As land now days becomes more scarce, the need for Small Farms to apply environmental friendly technology to improve productivity is key