CRISP is currently involved in developing a Policy Paper “Tailoring Rural Advisory Services for Family Farms for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The UN General Assembly declared 2014 to be the International Year of Family Farming and invited the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to facilitate implementation of the International Year, in collaboration with its partners. Among its other initiatives for the International Year, FAO has worked with the Global Forum on Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) in setting the spotlight on rural advisory services for family farms. This has been done by jointly organizing two recent side events on the topic – in Buenos Aires on 26 September 2014 during the 5th GFRAS Annual Meeting and in Rome on 27 October 2014 during the Global Dialogue on Family Farming. To continue and expand the dialogue to a global audience, FAO hosted an e-mail conference on “Tailoring rural advisory services to family farms” from 1 to 18 December 2014 which allowed several participants to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences on this topic. Results of the two side events and the e-mail conference have been used in the preparations of this document that elaborates how RAS cold support family farming and where its capacity to support family farmers could be strengthened.