We are updating and summarizing this report with the last events until September 2010.

We are updating and summarizing this report with the last events. In the world today there are 3000 million people who live in the countryside.

Summary report of Lawrence I. Hewes Jr.

Documents collected by the association Accompaniment Methodological Development Initiatives-ATOL.

In 2008, the intensity of the food crisis shed light on the world's hunger problem.
Indeed, with 963 million people affected, almost 1 out of 6 people currently suffers from hunger. The fight against this scourge requires, beyond the well intentioned declarations, a stronger, better organised and more coherent mobilisation of the international community.

At present, such a policy framework, that reunites all actors, does not exist. The framework for global action set out by the United Nations special team, created in April 2008, puts an emphasis on working to coordinate actors in the field on a national level.
However, there is no political area on the international level enabling more mutually coherent commercial, agricultural, energetic, financial and environmental policies which would all influence world food security.

The Agriculture and Food Commission of Coordination SUD undertook this study in an attempt to put family farming back into it rightful place as the core business of development in the South. It underlines the benefits of small farms for employment, poverty reduction, cost effectiveness, reducing hunger, respecting the environment and restoring life to rural areas.
The study is based on bibliographies and case studies drawn up by partners of Commission members. This document is an overview of this study1 and sets out the main results of the process. The first and second parts address the vital importance of small farms, and paradoxically, the lack of interest shown in them until recently by international development policies.
In the third part, we set out what we believe to be the cogent arguments for defending family farming as an essential part of development in the Global South.