Why are producer organizations critical?
The economic activities of forest and farming families, indigenous communities, and small- and medium-scale producers and enterprises are the basis of local livelihoods. They are also critical for achieving or maintaining a sustainable and durable future for the natural resources on which such activities are based. These producers manage most of the world’s agricultural land and forests and produce more than three-quarters of the food that we consume, even though they do not always have the legal rights to use the land or to what grows on it. But who represents them? And how are they engaged in policy processes to secure their, and the planet’s, future?

Throughout the world, small-scale producers operate through a vast network of locally controlled forest and farm enterprises. They are likely to be the most important suppliers of food and other resources for direct local consumption, processing or resale, including agricultural goods, timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs). And since their day-to-day existence and future economic survival depends on the health of the natural environment, they have a powerful incentive to combat land degradation and deforestation, and to conserve, use and manage their landscapes sustainably. But this is true only if they have rights to the land and resources through some form of local control.

Local producers can be landscape stewards while ensuring that forest and farm activities provide sustainable sources of income and improve well-being within their communities. However, their rights to use and own the land and the resources on which they depend are often insecure and unclear, due to overlapping and conflicting tenure regimes (such as customary, informal and formal systems), and the expansion of large-scale agriculture, forest and mining concessions, urbanization and industrial development.