The launch of the United Nations’ Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 is a major step toward advancing family farming, and securing family farmers’ important role in shaping our future.

This is the time to celebrate them and to thank our partners — from governments to civil society — for fighting with us to bring attention to the role of family farmers in feeding the world and nurturing the planet.

The advent of the Decade of Family Farming is the culmination of years of sustained efforts. It has been an intricate process that advanced and then slowed and met setbacks until, finally, there was a breakthrough — first, the launch, in 2014, of the International Year of Family Farming, and now the launch of the Decade, which is meant to spur concrete actions to support family farmers over the next 10 years and beyond.

Although family farmers are the bedrock of our food system, they also face challenges. Many family farmers in developing countries live in poverty and, paradoxically, many go hungry themselves. This is unacceptable, for them and for our collective future.

They are smallholder farmers, families of fishers, mountain and forest people, herders and other rural people who work the land. But they do much more.

They create jobs — on and off farms — and make rural economies grow. They preserve and restore biodiversity and ecosystems, and use production methods that can help reduce or avert the risks of climate change.

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