Family farmers fetch poor prices

in my daily work, i work with rural communities these are small scall maize growers in zambia, including other crops. these people contribute significantly in bulk 70% of there produce to feeding the country and yet they are not formally recognised commercially, because of such negative views as familly farming, even when they sell their produce it fetches low prices compared to the commercial farmers under the assumption that small scale maize is low grade, but when you compare their maize quality to that of commerciall guys its the same or even better. without good prices these guys cant save enough to break through the vicious pioverty web, low pricing keeps them within this web, even when they bulked there crop to achieve the market baggain volumes for a good price they still get a roll deal.

Due ecosystem rewards rarely make it to Family Farmers

International reports indicate that agriculture is both a contributor to climate change, and a possible solution. Thus family farming can feed the world and care for the environment. This is more or less what The AgriCultures Network members state in “Family Farming First” in The broker. Small-scale farmers make up a quarter of the world population, and, with rights to land and inputs), they invest in their farms’ resilience. FAO (2009) identifies as the most promising climate mitigation options: sustainable forest, cropland and rangeland management, agroforestry, and restoration of degraded and organic soils - all part of sustainable farming that peasants. That is, in a conducive (policy) environment (Van der Ploeg, 2008). Smallholder multicropping farming areas (with trees) provide watershed services for downstream communities, scenic landscapes, pollination, biological corridors and (agro)biodiversity. And such farming creates both resilience to and mitigation of climate change.

Sooner or later, substantial funds will be available for climate change. But how is such money going to be spent? With Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) a “buyer” (the world community) pays for ecological services (mitigation of climate change); often applied for farmers to conserve forests and other wildlife areas. But is “healthy farming” not the best small-scale farmers can offer to the world? What if, besides food, farmers produce environmental services on their land – and get rewarded for that?

PES fits in the multi-activity family farming system that Van der Ploeg (2008) describes: a peasant farmer takes any source of income that contributes to the farming system. But on the other hand PES may result in less flexibility when restricting the use of wildlife and forest areas.

All kind of exclusion mechanisms hinder small-scale farmers from enrollment in PES schemes: formal property rights, bureaucracy, lack of network and knowledge or just too small areas. For policy makers it may be easier to deal with a few landowners who manage vast areas of forests or agriculture land. But can we imagine that small-scale farmers will be included in PES schemes and tap funds such as to mitigate climate change? Can this become a fair market for ES from which smallholders benefit?

You can also question if PES is based on a valid analysis of the problem. Is the negligence of ecology due to the lack of economic value? If smallholders – women - have limited land tenure rights or no right to harvest trees, why would they invest?

Long-term benefits of ecosystem management are in itself an incentive to keep the farm sustainable and farmers do not need PES to farm in a sustainable way. But PES could still be a welcome source of extra income and it could trigger putting farmers’ real interests on the agenda. At pilot-scale, increasingly small-scale farmers are participating in PES schemes. It will be hard work to create the mechanisms by which the other 99.9 % could take part in PES-mechanisms – yet such work would pay of for a more sustainable world with less hunger. We think it’s worth the try.