Family farming or backyard farming,  has a  key role to play in food security in the Caribbean and Latin America.

This is according to a recent report: “The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas 2014: A Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean,”
In keeping with the renewed appreciation for the importance of backyard farming four young Guyanese  were recently recipients of  training in Mexico  for technology transfer to local farmers..

They are  Bissasar Chintamanie and  Devwattie Dass  of the Guyana School of Agriculture , Abiola Bruce of the Guyana Livestock Development Association (GLDA) and Aaron Ramroop of the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI).
The  recent document on family farming was jointly produced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The publication included a special chapter on the situation and expectations of family farming in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as analysis of the macroeconomic context; crop, livestock, forestry and fishery sectors; rural well-being; and agricultural institutions.

According to Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of ECLAC, despite the region’s agricultural slowdown in 2013, 2014 is expected to see economic conditions conducive to economic growth and regional agricultural growth.

“These trends should be underpinned by policies aimed not only at increasing yields in commercial farming but also boosting the successful inclusion of family farming in value chains,” she said.
Dr.Juan Alberto Sánchez Paredes Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Puebla in Mexico said that  in order to overcome poverty and strengthen  food security, family productive activities must have an initial role, where the backyard is a fundamental element of family production unit.

The backyard can be considered as a production system, comprising at least the subsystems of crops, livestock and forest.

These combine physical, economic and social functions, whose management is shared by all members of the family.

He said: to the crops of the backyard, the family provides the greatest care, irrigating them using water for domestic consumption and sometimes transporting through buckets.

The product of the activities of the backyard is priority intended to self-supply and as a reserve fund to keep social reproduction of the family and surpluses that are market-oriented in order to obtain income to solve a health emergency (illness mainly ) and to complete household spending.

Therefore, despite its apparent technological backwardness, as a system, it is extremely complex in its integration and management, so it is required to establish procedures properly tested to propose modifications that be successful over time.
Víctor M. Villalobos, IICA director general, noted that family farming is the economic activity with the “greatest potential for increasing food supply in the region, reducing unemployment and saving the most vulnerable rural population from poverty and malnutrition.”
Written By Clifford Stanley