The agriculture is the task that is to till and cultivate the land. Through these activities, food and various raw materials are obtained that allow the development of all kinds of products necessary for human beings. Family, meanwhile, is that linked to the family (the set of people who are related).
It is called family farming to agricultural jobs that are developed by members of a family. This type of agriculture involves the use of labor from the family itself: that is, those who carry out the tasks are the members of the family nucleus, be they men or women. In addition to agricultural production itself, among the activities included in this concept we must also take into account aquaculture, pastoral, fishing and forestry production.
According to various studies, family farming is usually the prevailing way of producing food, and this is equally true in developing and developed countries, something that speaks of its effectiveness as an economic support. Families work the land together to offer their products to wholesalers, distributors or even directly to the consumer. This makes family farming a livelihood for millions of people who focus their economy on farming.
Taking into account this social relevance, the State must regulate the conditions linked to the development of family farming. It is imperative that government authorities guarantee access to land and the market, facilitate financing to improve productivity, and protect the environment to prevent the loss of natural resources.
The government must also allow groups of people who want to engage in family farming access to complementary natural resources to carry out planting and harvesting tasks, among many others, but also to financing services to undertake and maintain their businesses, the technology necessary for work and any education or social integration platform that improves their relationship with the rest of the population, so that choosing this path does not mean isolating yourself from the rest of society but becoming a defining actor of your economy.
It is important to note that in some countries the State does not support family farming entrepreneurs as it should, with the attention and resources that it devotes to more traditional or larger-scale businesses, and this can have fatal consequences in situations such as floods or fires, both land private and the adjoining, as a natural disaster can affect soil conditions and alter other factors such as wind, negatively.
The development of family farming contributes to fighting hunger since these practices allow people to subsist. As family farming grows, the socioeconomic situation of families improves. But it also has a positive impact on the cultural, environmental and socioeconomic level at a general level.
Such is the impact of family farming on the market, which the United Nations itself declared 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, with the aim of making this form of economy more visible and raising awareness about its importance in issues such as poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, but also to continue working towards objectives such as the protection and administration of natural resources and the environment, and the development of sustainable techniques of agriculture.
