Today we are publishing the first stories of our journey to Uganda. It’s actually become one long story about Uganda’s small family farms. More than 70% of people in Uganda work in agriculture. The country has more than three and a half million family farms, and many of its smallholders are among the poorest people in the world. Ironically and tragically, they are also the people who most often suffer from hunger; 37.5% of the population lives below the poverty line of 1.25 dollar per day (other sources draw that line at 1.80 dollar). 
 
This is all important and useful information for the leaderships of political parties and for governments, but mere statistics have little relevance for the people concerned. Along with two local NGOs, we visited dozens of farming families, filmed them and noted down their hope-giving stories. 
 
We saw with our own eyes how with (shamefully) few financial resources these farming families, who are among the poorest people in the world, are able to escape poverty. This is also a story about agroecology, a traditional form of agriculture using methods that focus less on resources and that work in collaboration with society. Agroecology is more than simply a body of knowledge, since it’s also about how we deal with the landscape, nature and each other. It’s about more than just sustainable agriculture, since it concerns ‘sustainable livelihoods’ and food democracy. 
 
We end our story with a call to action by Hilal Elver, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food:
 
‘Food policies which do not address the root causes of world hunger would be bound to fail.’
 
Agriculture needs a new direction: agroecology.
 
Modern agriculture, which began in the 1950s, is extremely resource dependent. It relies on fossil fuels and the application of artificial fertilizer. A shortage of resources, a growing population, the declining availability and accessibility of land, increasing water scarcity and the depletion of soils are forcing us to think again about how we can best use our resources for future generations.
 
Only smallholder farmers and agroecology can feed the world.
 
Ruud Sies & Hanneke van Hintum