This report sets out how the BOND project’s activities in Portugal and Spain helped participants to develop new solutions to challenges and effective collective action in Family Farming in these regions. The role of Family Farming is recognised as a determining factor to ensure people’s food security and sovereignty, and as a model capable of responding to the various crises that society faces: financial, climate, energy, food, migration, and deprivation of rights. More recently, the COVID-19 global pandemic has exposed the fragility of our food systems.

BOND has supported Family Farming by reinforcing the bonds between farmers and between organisations, strengthening alliances and building links at different levels of the agricultural sector. We learned from each other’s experiences, knowledge and aspirations. The project has been fruitful in creating interesting initiatives, from which emerged policy recommendations ranging from global or local contexts, to discussions of how to reform the Common Agricultural Policy and similar policies which impact on agriculture, food and citizens’ lives. Among the many recommendations reflected in this publication, four key issues emerged:

• State commitments to instruments recognizing and valuing Family Farming;
• the introduction of agriculture and food policies which sustain food sovereignty by protecting and promoting healthy, sustainable and democratic agri-food models, as well as a fair income and decent living for farmers and their families;
• policies to encourage young and new farmers and reverse the abandonment of rural areas;
• a valorisation of the role of rural and women farmers.