Rome, 27th and 28th July 2020 – The joint secretariat of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) – UNDFF organised a digital Multi-Actor Global Exchange Meeting. As a member of the UNDFF International Steering Committee, WFO was represented by Mr Sok Sotha, Vice-President of Cambodian Farmers Association – Federation of Agricultural Producers (CFAP), Cambodia, as Representative for the WFO Asian Constituency; Ms Tamisha Tamara Lee, President of Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers (JNRWP), as representative of the WFO Women Committee; Mr Denis Kabiito, facilitator of WFO Youth Committee and CEO of Uganda National Young Farmers’ Association (UNYFA), as well as a delegation of observers among WFO members.
The meeting aimed to present the Modular Training Program on the Public Policy Cycle for Family Farming (MTP). The MTP is the first global product developed in the framework of the UNDFF, to provide a technical-methodological capacity development tool for state and non-state actors to design, implement and monitor public policies for family farming.
The meeting was the occasion for WFO representatives to reiterate WFO commitment and to share some key messages on the importance of engaging farmers in the policy making process starting from the national level, as well as on the need to empower and involve youth and women and facilitating farmers’ access to policies, resources and technology in order to effectively implement the UNDFF.
The UNDFF devotes specific attention to the development of an enabling policy environment to strengthen family farming (see Global Action Plan Pillar 1) through the design of effective and coherent public policies, providing direct support to family farmers, tailored to their multidimensional and geographic and socio-economic specificities. These policies are essential tools to direct strategic visions to respond to the current social, economic, and environmental challenges, and translate them into concrete and effective supporting actions.
In this framework, the meeting promoted knowledge exchange between different actors from various regions to identify challenges and solutions of development and implementation of public policies that directly target family farming, as well as collect preliminary inputs and contributions to be implemented in the MTP.