Family farms produce 80 percent of world’s food from 70.80 percent of farm land. By 2050 food grain production needs to grow 330 MT per year. The small family farms are ecological and play a big role in promoting food security and nutritional support.

In the state of Kerala, the average land holding size is only 0.2ha. Mostly, they are coconut based homesteads. The biggest challenge faced by small farmers is making them profitable.  Thus, the focus of Farmer FIRST Programme (FFP) in Pathiyoor panchayath promoted since 2016 by Indian Council of Agricultural Research – Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Kayamkulam was  on integrating technologies for improving farm livelihoods and incomes. This was to be done through participatory interventions in crop, horticulture, livestock, natural resource management, value addition and IFS among 1000 farm families.

A brief timeline of the interventions included Rapid rural analysis followed by Participatory Rural Analysis (PRA), formal pre project survey among 750 sample respondents, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in all the 19 wards involving ward representatives and stakeholders, for prioritizing problems, delineating solutions and farmer’s aspiration and program objectives were completed in 2016. Strategies were designed to address the following challenges: Small size of farm/coconut plots; the rapidly changing social and economic challenges of farming including non viable scale of production. Also, the other factors and challenges recognized included: poor extension outreach to small farmers, especially women, farmer’s limited resources and incomes. One of the useful strategies identified was, value addition. However, it was essential to define, refine, design, develop and humanize the ‘value addition extension strategies’ suitable for small and marginal farmers of the panchayath.