Abstract:

The report analyses family farms and the role of innovation in ensuring global food security, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. It argues that family farms must be supported to innovate in ways that promote sustainable intensification of production and improvements in rural livelihoods. Innovation is a process through which farmers improve their production and farm management practices. This may involve planting new crop varieties, combining traditional practices with new scientific knowledge, applying new integrated production and post-harvest practices or engaging with markets in new more rewarding ways. But innovation requires more than action by farmers alone. The public sector working with the private sector, civil society and farmers and their organisations must create an innovation system that links these various actors, fosters the capacity of farmers and provides incentives for them to innovate.