2026-06-28http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/321806An estimated 500 million small farmers – men and women – produce most of the developing world’s food. Yet their families suffer more hunger than even the urban poor, have higher rates of poverty and enjoy less access to basic social services. Meeting international commitments to halve hunger and poverty in the developing world by 2015 means reaching these farm households. However, traditional approaches have not worked. In order to provide the conditions that will permit poor farm households to improve their own lives, governments, non-governmental organizations and international agencies must understand more clearly the agro-ecological, physical, economic and cultural environment within which farmers and their families live – their farming systems. Only in this way can realistic policies, investments and technical assistance programmes be developed and implemented, and the latent capacity of the farming population fully released.application/pdftext/htmlFAOBook (stand-alone)