Strengthening the role of family and small-scale farmers in scaling up agroecology

The Director-General also highlighted the Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) and the Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025) as opportunities to raise awareness about the valuable link between family farming, agroecology and sustainable development.
The way forward
The Symposium Chair Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias stressed in his summary that "agroecology offers multiple benefits, including for increasing food security and resilience, boosting livelihoods and local economies, diversifying food production and diets, promoting health and nutrition, safeguarding natural resources, biodiversity and ecosystem functions, improving soil fertility and soil health, adapting to and mitigating climate change, and preserving local cultures and traditional knowledge systems".
"It is critical that legal and regulatory frameworks are implemented in a way that ensures transformative change towards sustainable agriculture and food systems based on agroecology, and respects, protects and fulfils farmers' rights and access to productive resources such as land, water and seeds."
The chair's summary also drafts a way forward including a list of "urgently needed" commitments from stakeholders. Governments are called on to develop policy and legal frameworks to promote and support agroecology and sustainable food systems and to remove "perverse incentives" for unsustainable agriculture.
The summary called on FAO to develop a detailed 10-year action plan for agroecology and to begin implementing the Scaling up Agroecology Initiative. Consumers and citizens are urged to act as agents of change in the food system to promote responsible consumption. Donors are asked to increase long-term funding to agroecology, while academia and research organisations are encouraged to increase research on agroecology.
Related
Northern Cape mega-farm installs 1MW solar plant to cut costs, boost sustainability 2 days Livelihoods first in communal grazing restoration project 10 Jul 2025 Thanda’s agroecology initiative cultivates opportunities for youth as unemployment rises 4 Jun 2025 Industrial scale farming is flawed: What ecologically-friendly farming practices could look like in Africa 24 Jan 2025 #BizTrends2025: Adapting agriculture - key trends and strategies for a sustainable future 21 Jan 2025 #BizTrends2025: Curating the future - the transformation of food security in South Africa 13 Jan 2025