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n the global development agenda, food security remains a key focus. In the post-2015 process, Goal Two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) highlights food security and links it to sustainable agriculture: '€œEnd hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.'€

This year the theme for World Food Day is '€œFamily farming, feeding the world, caring for the earth'€. By profiling family farming and smallholder farmers, which are still the predominant form of agriculture globally, the theme calls attention to the important role of this mode of production in providing not only for food security and nutrition, but also for the sustainable management of natural resources and protection of the environment.

The chosen theme also indirectly refers to the fact that security of tenure and good governance are crucial aspects to ensure that farming be sustainable and equitable. Smallholding does not necessarily chart a course to future food scarcity, low productivity or small economy. It can indeed be an appropriate and responsible local response to food security and sustainable management of resources.

Moreover, traditional farming systems tend to feature and uphold higher biodiversity and agro-biodiversity. We know that traditional and family farming are by-and-large based on a diversity of cultivars and uses, intense agroforestry and ecological agricultural practices, and hence the role of this mode of food and agricultural production in protecting the environment and enriching its biodiversity. A strong connection with the environment is what underpins and reinforces a sustainable agriculture and a healthy food system.

Food as nutrition is a basic need and human right. And so is the right to a healthy environment. Anthropologists, folklorists and historians have told us that food, its preparation and consumption, what we classify as food, how we prepare and eat it, embodies deep cultural meanings and is socially constructed.

Food recipes reflect history, carry traditions and reveal the identity of ethnic groups. Food marks every celebration of the life cycle. Food is importantly part of a production system that takes and uses resources from the forests, the rivers and the seas, and the bounty of nature.

A food system, through the able and knowledgeable hands of farmers, fishers and food artisans, shapes and enriches the environment, etches the landscape and then engages in the market and social circles.

Seeing food in this relational dimension that includes environment, the economy, rights and cultural dimensions, prods us to consider more broadly the complex nexus at the heart of '€œfood security'€ and furthers a new commitment to transforming the use of resources and food production to guarantee sustainability.

Farming is a way to produce food, but it is also a way in which we manage the land and its resources, shape social and economic relations. We can take the example of a traditional farming system like ladang in Kalimantan.

While unfairly criticized for decades for being destructive of the tropical forest and wasteful, the traditional ladang system is a forest and agricultural management system and family farming with obvious advantages: economic (efficiency, self-supporting, multi-cropping); environmental (adapted to tropical conditions, sustaining forest succession and fertility of the soil); and social (cooperative work, division of labor, efficient use of time). The diversity of the products of the ladang system, combined with their localism, indicate a high level of endemism of species and cultivars, often with multiple uses beyond food.

The food products, well beyond rice, include some varieties that are now fast disappearing but used to have an important role in reducing vulnerability to food security, increase resilience to weather patterns and ensure a varied and healthy diet, like millet, sorghum and several local rice varieties.

Additional products were cassava, taro, sweet potatoes, corn, vegetables and an abundance of local fruit varieties. The local and complex system has numerous benefits for producers, consumers and the environment. This is true as long as the system is in balance and the complex of practices, relations and benefits do not stretch physical limits of production beyond a point of no return and respect the fragility of the ecosystem.

Addressing the right to food and a healthy environment requires that we promote environment-friendly methods and investment (e.g., recycle farm water, multi-species, maintain agro-biodiversity, small mechanization, post-harvest storage, pest management, rainwater harvesting, etc.), but also map, document and protect the bio-cultural knowledge systems related to plants and crops.

In landscapes and regions where traditional management practices, customary land use, local wisdom and rich biodiversity are linked in strong and adaptive systems, these need to be maintained so that they can serve as a basis for sustainable and resilient agriculture and food production.

We do not need to be part of a traditional farming community in a physical sense to become actors of change and be part of the transformation of food systems toward more sustainability and equity.

Through our food choices, we can also help forge equitable relations between producers and consumers, maintain the cultural, social and environmental identity of food and contribute to a healthy and diverse environment.