Innovation in Agriculture and Rural Poverty: a case for Family Farming

Nowadays agricultural markets are going through a process of radical transformation, and new opportunities are emerging in the rural non-farming sector of the economy; as a consequence, chances arise to make significant progress in the fight against rural poverty, in a fast changing global context. Among the mentioned opportunities, the growth of urban centers and the resulting increase in demand for food products with greater added value, and the expansion of agricultural markets, in order to deal with such a demand. Despite during the past ten years more than 350 million people in rural areas have reached a standard of living out of the state of absolute poverty, global poverty itself remains a phenomenon predominantly rural. According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Report almost 70 percent of the one billion and four hundred million people, around the world, experiencing extreme poverty live in rural areas. In order to put in place effective strategies aiming at reducing rural poverty at a global level, it is fundamental to create an environment that allows people living in rural areas to overcome all the challenges they constantly face in their efforts to successfully manage their farms and other economic activities. This is particularly true with reference to Family farming, in the aftermath of the 2014 International Year of Family Farming (IYFF); a vital role towards the eradication of hunger, the achievement of sustainable development and environment protection, it is necessary to involve local communities, who act as custodians of agricultural heritage, in particular in the context of Developing countries; through an in depth analysis of the actual state of the art, it is fundamental to translate the research outputs into governance tools useful at different scales, in order to advice those decision-makers responding to the priorities of rural populations.