Family Farming: governments and organizations highlight the need to develop public policies for access to land and land tenure

Limited access to land and insecure land tenure continue to be major challenges to strengthening family farming. These barriers constrain productive investment, hinder generational renewal and reduce the sector’s contribution to sustainable development.

In response to this challenge, 95 representatives of the family farming sector from 18 countries across Europe and Central Asia, the Near East and North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean agreed on the need to develop public policies and regulatory frameworks to ensure effective access to land and land tenure for family farming. They also highlighted the importance of developing tools to advance a modernization agenda for land administration systems, thereby ensuring the recognition of individual, collective and customary rights.

This is particularly relevant in a context where family farming and small-scale agriculture represent account for 85 percent of the world’s 570 million farms, yet cultivate only 9 percent of the world’s agricultural land, according to The Status of Land Tenure and Governance, publish by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Cooperation Centre for Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) and the International Land Coalition (ILC).

The first session and the II Interregional Dialogues on Family Farming was held in Brasilia, Brazil. The meeting, held within the framework of the Regional Technical Platform for Family Farming, is organized by FAO and the Government of Brazil, through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ABC/MRE) and the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), under the Brazil-FAO South-South Cooperation Programme.

The meeting brought together government representatives, members of civil society, delegates from technical cooperation and regional integration organizations, and international organizations, who recognized the importance of promoting transfer instruments and succession mechanisms that encourage young people to remain in rural areas, as well as developing policies and programmes specially targeted at women.

The experiences shared during the meeting demonstrated progress in overcoming access barriers to access to land, reducing land concentration, and promoting generational renewal in family farming. In particular, participants discussed the public policies promoted by Brazil, as well as progress within expanded Mercosur and the land agenda of the Specialized Meeting on Family Farming (REAF/MERCOSUR). Experiences from Paraguay, Guatemala, Grenada, Costa Rica, Mexico were also presented, the latter with a particular emphasis on women’s access to land.

“Strengthening family farming required targeted actions and policies that ensure access to land and, above all, secure land tenure”, said Jorge Meza, FAO representative in Brazil.

Cesar Aldrighi, president of Brazil’s National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), stated that land security and secure land tenure are essential for cultural preservation, environmental protection, and the sustainable development of these territories. “I am convinced that challenges related to access to land and land tenure governance are not unique to a single country or region; they are shared challenges that require solutions built through the exchange of experiences”, he added.

The central theme of this edition, which includes four additional meetings in the Philippines, Hungary, Egypt and Italy, will continue to be access to land and responsible land tenure. This theme responds both to the United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 and to the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests. The conclusions emerging from each session will serve as the main input for the Global Solutions Forum, to be held in November of this year.