This book aims at explaining the nature and strength of the links between the families and their farms looking at their diversity throughout the world. To do so, it documents family farming diversity by using the sustainable rural livelihood (SRL) framework exploring their ability to adapt and transform to changing environments. In 18 case studies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, it shows how family farms resist under adverse conditions, seize new opportunities and permanently transform. Family farms, far from being backwards are potential solutions to face the current challenges and shape a new future for agriculture taking advantage of their local knowledge and capacity to cope with external constraints. Many co-authors of the book have both an empirical and theoretical experience of family farming in developed and developing countries and their related institutions. They specify «what makes and means family» in family farming and the diversity of their expertise draws a wide and original picture of this resilient way of farming throughout the world.
In contemporary times where farming models are challenged through deep transformations of agricultural organizations and markets, this books proposes a new visit of the diversity of family forms of production to explore their current transformations all over the world. By adopting a comprehensive perspective it allows bringing together several dimensions often studied separately: linkages with markets, territorial development, labour mobility through migrations and livelihood strategies, farms' autonomy, and food security, as well as the many ways of collective action and the role of public policies.
The book relies on 18 case studies in the five continents. All were driven with a single and original methodological framework, inspired by the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods. The SRL initial framework was reshaped and adapted to allow each author to fine-tune "what makes family", to understand family labour adaptations to their environment, and to align them with territorial dynamics and public policies in each national situation.
Co-written by a network of researchers, this book deepens scientific knowledge on family farming around the world, and at the same time it contributes to test and improve a methodological framework adapted to analyse and of observe rural dynamics.
It is dedicated to researchers, teachers and students, agronomists, economists, geographers, sociologists and historians but also experts and practitioners in agricultural and rural development. More widely, NGOs and any citizen willing to understand the family farming's issues in different social contexts, should also find interest in reading it.
