Family Farmers Hold Keys to Agriculture in a Warming World

Risingbd Desk, DHAKA, May 2: Faced with global warming and a population that will swell to nine billion by 2050, a growing number of experts say that the way to feed the masses as climate change makes growing our food more difficult is to focus on family farmers, who often can barely feed themselves.

When policymakers in the developed world talk about feeding billions of extra mouths in the decades to come, it`s multinational agribusinesses—which operate industrial-size farms—that usually get most of the attention.

But in the long run, it`s small-scale farmers in the developing world, using low-tech but sustainable agricultural techniques, who may be best poised to lead the way in adapting to a warmer world and ensuring the security of the global food supply.

There are more than 500 million family farmers who produce at least 56 percent of the world`s food. Most are subsistence farmers, scratching out barely enough to feed their own families, with little or nothing left over to take to market.

A report on family farms released in March by the sustainable agriculture group Food Tank credits these small-scale farmers with contributing to global food security—that is, having sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis—through the use of more sustainable agricultural practices.

For instance, while agribusinesses use fertilizers and pesticides to yield bumper crops of single grains like corn and wheat, smallholder farmers are growing indigenous plants that help protect increasingly stressed natural resources (like water) and that improve the density of nutrients in crops.

That helps explain why the Food Tank report, which crunched data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other sources, concluded that smallholder farms "are not only feeding the world, but also nourishing the planet."

The United Nations, for its part, has designated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming to raise the profile of these unsung agricultural workers and spotlight the roles they could play in the face of challenges like climate change, malnutrition, and poverty.

 Source: geographic.com

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