SALSA policy briefs to guide policy interventions in support of small farms
SALSA - Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security, is an EU-funded research project of the Horizon2020 program which run from April 2016 to March 2020 with the aim to provide a better understanding of the role of small farms and small food businesses in meeting the sustainable food and nutrition security challenge.
In the project, FAO was responsible for the communication and joint learning, setting up Communities of Practice at various levels as multi-stakeholder learning platforms to consult, validate and move forward the research and enrich the knowledge base on relevant questions.
SALSA pioneered a novel integrated multi-method approach in 30 regions across 19 countries in Europe and Africa using the most recent satellite technologies, field assessments, systematic review, participatory construction of knowledge, transdisciplinary theory building, and participatory foresight analysis.
One of the project's major outcomes is a series of 5 Policy Briefs with policy lessons and recommendations that especially target decision makers in the reference regions as well as the EU policy development, paying particular attention to the Europe-Africa dialogue.
The SALSA project experience demonstrates that agricultural and food systems research across continents, with research sites in both Europe and Africa, can result in valuable insights and learning in both directions. Lessons from Europe are valuable to African partners, as their countries are developing rapidly. An understanding of strengths and weaknesses of European agricultural policies (and their impacts on small farms) can improve decision making. European partners can learn from Africa about informal and community-based approaches to support food and nutrition security.
The SALSA research shows that policy interventions would benefit from being more territorially based and from taking into account the characteristics of regional food systems and as well as the different types of small farms that take part in them.
Small farms in Africa are estimated to undertake more than 70% of the agricultural activities on the continent, thereby helping ensure food, employment and rural livelihoods. Available data however indicate that there remain severe challenges related to food insecurity and nutrition. Producing enough food in Africa in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner will therefore require sustainable increases in productivity for all farm types. Two overriding policy recommendations of relevance to all regions studied:
- Introduce appropriate combinations of policy interventions to help small farms add value to their produce since they are more productive and profitable when they specialize in quality produce and processing. This may include support to those small farms that are mainly self-provisioning, but who have the ambition to commercialise.
- Foster and facilitate cooperation as the most enabling and empowering form of governance for small farms and small food businesses. This includes the introduction of appropriate frameworks for value chain strategies /contracts that promote greater coordination and the more equitable distribution of power and financial benefit between small farmers and other supply chain actors.
The Policy Briefs