Side Event - Tuesday 26 August morning

How can farming system analysis and design contribute to helping smallholder family farmers in developing countries escape poverty traps

Objective: Create a community of practise around farm-level analysis and design in smallholder/family farm contex

Description of the session:

A substantial share of world food in produced by smallholder family farmers in developing countries. These farmers operate in a constrained economic environment, that influence the way farm-design and farm analysis are carried-out. Of particular interest of this side-session will be the potential trade-offs between improving food production and farmers’ income, while at the same time safeguarding the environment. How far technologies and innovative farm practices can deliver win-wins with regard to these two dimensions will be discussed.

Tentative agenda:

Presentation: What does farm-level analysis and design mean in smallholder family farm contexts – concepts& methods

Plenary presentation of participants: Participants are asked to bring to the session a 1-minute speech on their research focus, methods and study sites that talk to the topic of the side-session

Group discussions

Question 1: Is there a trade-off between provisioning services (i.e producing more food, fuel, fodder or fibre) and regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services

Reporting on group discussion

Question 2: Priorities for jointly increasing provisioning services and other eco-system services (45min)

Reporting on group discussion

Wrap-up and way forward

Organisers:

Gatien Falconnier (Gatien.falconnier@cirad.fr)

Chloe MacLaren (chloe.maclaren@slu.se)

François Affholder (francois.affholder@cirad.fr)