IPEMED, partner of 2014 SIA - Family farming: an asset for the Mediterranean

Published : Friday 06 November 2015
In Mediterranean countries, the agricultural sector features changing family farming, agribusiness, as well as a significant share of subsistence farming. Therefore, the restoration of family farming is a major challenge for the region and public policies should place it at the heart of their agricultural development model. Given its major role, it must be protected and supported - strong signals must be sent to improve its competitiveness and production. Focusing on the exchange of expertise and good practices between North and South could foster a better Euro-Mediterranean regional cooperation in favour of family farming, all the more so as 2014 was declared “International Year of Family Farming” by the United Nations.

In order to tackle the double issue of food safety and sustainable rural development, family farms have the potential to become economically viable as well as socially and ecologically responsible companies. How to boost this potential? What are the stakes for northern and southern farmers?

This is the object of the workshop on family farming in the Mediterranean led by Lucien Bourgeois, an economist and member of the French Academy of Agriculture.

In SEMC, family farming dominates the agricultural sector

Family farming mostly relies on a family workforce that combines the production unit (farm) with the domestic unit. Even though it has been edged out for many years and neglected by governments in favour of a more liberal approach, family farming still dominates the agricultural sector in SEMC. It boasts many recognised assets: contribution to food safety, source of jobs (nearly 50% of SEMC population still lives off the rural world) and biodiversity as well as moderator of the crises going on in the rural world. Deeply rooted in the territories, it cannot be relocated, contrary to factory farming.

In order to support family farming, several challenges must be taken up: favouring the stability of the rural world, for the political stability of SEMC also depends on family farming; reducing gaps between coastal and interior areas as well as between rural and urban worlds; creating jobs and reducing unemployment; adapting the sector to climate change; improving food safety in all its dimensions.

FAO’s works highlight the structural difficulties having a direct impact on family farming: parcelling out of the land and significant decrease in the size of farms causing profitability issues, feminisation of family farming (along with difficulties in terms of inheritance and access to loans) and ageing of farmers (in Tunisia, 50% of the population is over 60).

With no precise data for the southern countries of the Mediterranean, governments have difficulties to define adapted public policies regarding rural populations. A research programme could be usefully developed and the different sectors should be analysed with precision.

Therefore, public authorities must implement agricultural policies in favour of a better territorial anchoring of family farming, reinforce the distinction between products and short chains, increase employment opportunities in the rural world, acknowledge the various functions of family farming and implement a legal framework to secure the status of family farms.

A potential to be released

In order for family farming to reveal its potential, several prior conditions must be implemented: securing access to natural resources, improving infrastructures and market access, diversifying the local rural economy, improving access to funding without worsening farmers’ debts, improving the institutional framework and reinforcing professional organisations, making access to innovation easier and placing family farming at the centre of the agricultural development model.

To which Pascal Berget, Director of CIHEAM-IAM Montpellier, adds three priority elements:
- implementing inclusive planning to give a voice to farmers;
- reinforcing farmers’ social protection;
- identifying complementarity schemes and “win-win” partnerships between family farming and agribusiness.

The Plan Maroc Vert - A useful experience for the region

The Plan Maroc Vert, launched in 2008, relies on family farms to increase agricultural productivity and employment in the rural world. Nevertheless, it is still too soon to draw conclusions and assert that the gap between agri-food industry and small and medium-size farms has been reduced.

According to Hassan Benabderrazik, a critical analysis of this plan could highlight several courses of actions that could prove useful to other countries in the region: reinforced actions on properties, especially in the recognition of property rights and the use of these rights as underlying assets, management of access to resources, access to loans, implementation of formal collateral mechanisms and implementation of farmer gathering policies. Finally, another crucial element is the good management of farms demographic transition.

CAP and SEMC - Sharing good practices

When it comes to farming, northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean still fail to understand each other. By adopting a new common agricultural policy (CAP) in 2013, did Europe turn its back on the South? This is how many farmers feel in SEMC. For Pierre Bascou, head of unit at the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission, the new CAP is mainly influenced by internal European issues and aims to contribute to food safety in non-member neighbouring countries. In the context of their rural and agricultural development programmes, SEMC could apply CAP good practices in order to modernise small and medium-size family farms.
Photos
Videos
Share this article
Print Send by e-mail