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Moderated conference on rural advisory services for family farms: 1-18 December 2014

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Fri, 28 Nov 2014 17:09:51 +0100
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Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to this FAO e-mail conference on "Tailoring rural advisory services to family farms" !! Thank you for joining.

You can send messages now (send them to [log in to unmask]). Messages will be posted from Monday 1 December onwards while the last day for receiving messages will be Thursday 18 December 2014.

We hope that the conference will be interesting, constructive and beneficial and we encourage you to participate actively. On joining the conference, subscribers received a Welcome Text which also contains the Guidelines for Sending Messages. Here, we would like to briefly remind you of some of the main points about the running of the conference:

1. Participants should introduce themselves briefly (2-3 sentences) when sending their first message to the conference. They should also provide their full work address at the end of the message. When a message is posted, we will replace @ in the e-mail address with (at) to avoid spamming.

2. Messages should not exceed 600 words

3. People posting messages are assumed to be speaking on their own behalf and not on behalf of their employers (unless they indicate otherwise)

4. Messages posted in the conference will also be made available on the web, at: 
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=RAS-L  

5. No messages will be posted with attachments. If you receive a message during the conference with an e-mail attachment, just delete it without opening the attachment.

6. The Background Document to the conference, sent by e-mail to subscribers of this conference on 22 November. The document sets the scene for the conference and we strongly encourage you to read it, especially Section 4 (reproduced below) which provides specific guidance about the questions that participants should address in the conference. The document is available at http://www.fao.org/3/a-at652e.pdf (70 KB). Contact me (at [log in to unmask]) if you want to receive the document by e-mail.

Finally, we encourage you to tell any potentially interested colleagues or contacts about this conference. A short notice is included below for this purpose.

With our sincere best wishes for a successful conference,

John

John Ruane, PhD
Research and Extension Unit,
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla,
00153 Rome, Italy
E-mail address: [log in to unmask] 
Web: http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/en/     

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Tailoring rural advisory services to family farms: FAO hosting an e-mail conference from 1 to 18 December 2014

The UN General Assembly declared 2014 to be the International Year of Family Farming and invited the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to facilitate implementation of the International Year, in collaboration with its partners. 

Among its other initiatives for the International Year, FAO has worked with the Global Forum on Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) in setting the spotlight on rural advisory services for family farms. This has been done by jointly organizing two recent side events on the topic - in Buenos Aires on 26 September 2014 during the 5th GFRAS Annual Meeting and in Rome on 27 October 2014 during the Global Dialogue on Family Farming. To continue and expand the dialogue to a global audience, FAO is now hosting an e-mail conference on "Tailoring rural advisory services to family farms" which will allow participants to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences on this topic. The conference runs from 1 to 18 December 2014. Results of the two side events and the e-mail conference will feed into preparations of a document on policies to enhance rural advisory services for family farms that FAO and GFRAS are planning to publish in 2015.

The conference is open to everyone, is free and will be moderated. To subscribe to the conference, send an e-mail to [log in to unmask] with the following one line in the body of the message (leave the subject line blank):
subscribe RAS-L firstname lastname

Where firstname and lastname refer to the person's first and last name. For example, if the subscriber's name is John Smith, then the line should be:
subscribe RAS-L John Smith

A short background document was published on 22 November and was sent to subscribers. We ask you to kindly spread the word about this conference to others, so that it reaches other people who might be interested in joining.

For more information, please contact [log in to unmask] or see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/264776/  

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[Section 4 of the Background Document]

4. Main questions to be discussed by participants in the conference

This e-mail conference enables participants from around the world to share and discuss their experiences, lessons learned and perspectives regarding rural advisory services for family farms. 

The main kinds of topics to be discussed by participants in the conference are described below:

4.1 What are the unique characteristics or features of rural advisory services for different types of family farms?

As described above, three broad categories of family farms can be described i.e. 
- large family farms which are essentially large business ventures; 
- small or medium-sized family farms which are, or may become, market-oriented and commercial;
- subsistence or near-subsistence smallholders.

Given that the focus of this e-mail conference is on the second and third categories of family farms, what are the unique characteristics or features of rural advisory services for each of these two categories of family farms? Also, how do the characteristics differ between the two categories? Furthermore, how do they differ from the characteristics of rural advisory services needed by family farms in the first category? 

 4.2 What are the current gaps in rural advisory services for smallholder family farms? 

Based on your experiences, what are the kinds of rural advisory services that different types of family farms require but which are currently missing? If possible, provide specific examples of these kinds of gaps in your country or region.

4.3 What role can producer organizations play in tailoring rural advisory services for family farms?

Both FAO (2014) and GFRAS (2013) recognize the importance of effective and inclusive producer organizations in strengthening both the demand and the supply side of rural advisory services. Are there concrete examples from your country or region where producers' organizations are playing or have played a central role in providing rural advisory services to family farms and are helping or have helped them voice their requirements? If so, how are they doing this?

4.4 Are there regional specificities regarding rural advisory services for family farms?

When considering the above questions (regarding the unique characteristics, current gaps and role of producer organizations concerning rural advisory services for family farms), are there any region-specific characteristics, conditions, problems or issues that need to be considered? If so describe them?

4.5 How to improve the outreach and impact of rural advisory services?

As described in Section 2, evidence from low- and middle-income countries suggests that only a small share of family farms may access rural advisory services and that access is lower for smaller family farms and for women farmers. What different approaches may be used to improve outreach of rural advisory services to family farms? Also, what particular approaches may be used to improve outreach for smaller family farms and for women farmers? In addition, how can the quality of rural advisory services be improved so that their impact can be increased?

4.6 What strategies are needed at the national/state level to enhance rural advisory services for family farms?

As described in Section 1, results of the e-mail conference will feed into a document for policy-makers that FAO and GFRAS are planning to publish in 2015 on strategies to enhance rural advisory services for family farms. What kind of state or national level strategies would you recommend to include in this document? Are some of these recommendations region-specific? Also, do good examples of such state or national level strategies already exist? 

4.7 How can family farmers be best involved in formulating policies relevant to rural advisory services for family farms?

As seen in Section 3, the vast majority of family farms are small, mostly under one hectare. In rural areas of developing countries, the possibility of family farmers to participate in many decision-making processes may be limited. For example, their access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the telephone, radio, video and Internet, can be low (and is lower for women than men). When developing strategies to tailor rural advisory services relevant to their needs, how do we ensure that the voices of small men and women farmers, particularly in lower-income developing countries, are heard and considered? How important can producer organizations and other institutions be in this regard, how can they best intervene for this purpose and what support do they need in this respect?

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