Poverty eradication and the promotion of sustainable patterns of consumption and production constitute the overarching framework and rationale of the new global development agenda. While great progress in poverty reduction has been achieved over the last decades, over 2.1 billion people still live in poverty, about 767 million in extreme poverty, and about 800 million live in hunger. These numbers are also reflected in the NENA region where 70 percent of poor still live in rural areas, many being small family farmers and small-scale food producers that depend at least partly on agriculture, fishery, forestry for food and income and that face varying level of difficulties when trying to access resources and services. In NENA, 85 percent of the agricultural land holdings are farmed by families.

For its potential to be fully deployed, the rural poor need to be supported by an effective political commitment and by the consequent implementation of differentiated poverty reduction strategies tailored on local realities and characterized by an integrated (economic, social, institutional, environmental) approach at territorial level. Registration of farmers and the development of datasets that also consider the socioeconomic situation of these smallholders is a tool that can generate various positive impacts in public policies and provision of services to rural workers and family farmers. 
Several experiences have gained increasing attention in recent years, some of the most innovative related to agricultural and/or social protection policies are the national voluntary registries of family farms. FAO has been supported many farmers’ registries that have broad functions. The webinar made the case for these types of databases as important social protection, management and statistical tools, and presented some cases.

Panellists: 

Faten Adada, National Coordinator on Social Protection and Child Labour (Lebanon), FAO

Salvatore Carfi, Team Leader, AGEA Brussels

Moderator:

Alfredo Impiglia, Manager of the Regional Initiative Small Scale Family Farming in the NENA Region, FAO