Background 

It is estimated that approximately 85 percent of the world’s farms are smaller than 2 hectares. In Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, small-scale and family farmers produce approximately 80 percent of the total food consumed, and employ more than 75 percent of the population. Despite this, the contribution of smallholder family farmers to the formal economy is still underestimated due to limitations of the agricultural information systems in integrating family farmers into the official statistics. In other words, the social unit (i.e. the family) that constitute the majority of farm holdings is poorly documented and is not captured by the official statistics in the majority of the cases - rendering difficult to target them according to their current situation and specific investment needs.   As a result, for decades, policies and projects in support of family farmers did not consider the existence of various types of production structures operating in contrasted resources and environmental settings.           

The World Agricultures Watch (WAW), an international initiative financed by FAO, IFAD and the Government of France, proposes to use a typological approach to categorize farming diversity based on the various assets managed by the agricultural holdings and the organizational, institutional and policy environment affecting the development of these assets. Direct support to include farmers’ organizations in WAW process and activities has been supported by AgriCord. The typological approach also supports the collection and analysis of family farming data, which captures key characteristics and needs of the different farms categories in the rural areas, and ensure that policies and projects will focus/target the poorest and vulnerable family farmers that in most cases are not captured by the official statistics in a comprehensive way.  

Objectives 
The overall objective of the workshop is to share lessons learned from the WAW Pilot phase implemented in six countries  contributing to strengthening the capacities of national observatories and organizations dealing with farm data collection, and analysis. 

Specific objectives of the workshop are:

• Share lessons learned from the Pilot  phase;
• Discuss about the consolidation and scaling-up of the project in the pilot countries and potential replication of the initiative in new countries;   
• Identify major knowledge gaps and new areas to be covered/explored by the project in the next phase. 

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