The World Rural Forum is organising an event under the slogan ‘A Decade to Improve the Life of Family Farmers’

The eyes of family farming will be on the Basque town of Derio from 25 to 29 March. There will be a meeting attended by representatives of various governments, agricultural organisations, international bodies, rural development associations, NGOs, cooperatives and research centres from the five continents.

Organised by the World Rural Forum, the organisation based in the Basque Country that has managed to get the United Nations to declare the Decade for Family Farming 2019-2028, it wants to establish the basic elements and alliances that will drive this initiative over the next ten years. Another of the goals of the meeting is to promote the Decade as a key tool for the fulfilment of the SDGs.

The programme of the VI Global Conference on Family Farming includes presentations, workshops, meetings and visits to two agricultural cooperatives, the Derio Agricultural School and the Ribera Market in Bilbao.

The hope of this sector lies, to a great extent, in the fact that young people are willing to work in this activity. According to the report titled Agrarian Youth in the Basque Country, for every farmer under the age of 41, there are 13 professionals over the age of 55.

“The generational change-over is one of the great challenges for the immediate future and, together with the role of women, one of the key topics that we will be discussing at the Conference“, the forum organisers say. The official programme reserves two specific working meetings for young people and women. Both meetings will take place on the second day, Tuesday, the 26th.

“There is a number of public policies regarding basic services for rural areas, training, the culture of associations, access to credit and funding, access to the land, among others, that must be applied to ensure that young people, women and men, can take over from their elders and opt for family farming” says the organisation.