International Year of Family Farming

Traditional farming implements alongside agricultural produce: a hen surrounded by pumpkins, a basket of potatoes and other vegetables and flowers. The commemorative inscription "AGRICULTURA FAMILIAR" curves in a semicircle to the left; "PORTUGAL" and the year "2014" in a corresponding arc to the right. Lower left: the INCM mintmark.

According to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization, family farming feeds around 70 percent of the world's population and cultivates the largest share of global farmland. In Europe it has shaped rural structures for centuries, and particularly clearly so in Portugal: small farms, worked jointly across generations of a family, dominate large parts of the Alentejo, the Ribatejo and the northern mountain regions. These farms produce not only staple foods such as grain, potatoes and vegetables, but also preserve traditional growing methods, regional variety diversity and the maintenance of the cultural landscape. Unlike large industrial operations, they are closely woven into the social fabric of village communities and are regarded in agricultural scholarship as an important buffer against soil degradation and biodiversity loss.

Portugal is among the EU countries whose agricultural structure continues to be shaped by small and medium-sized family farms, even though emigration and economic pressure have led to noticeable structural change since the 1970s. Portuguese agriculture is thus representative of a challenge shared by many European societies: how can family-based ways of farming be preserved under the conditions of global markets and climate change? In 2014 the United Nations declared the International Year of Family Farming to draw worldwide attention to these questions and to encourage policy measures supporting smallholder farms. Portugal took this occasion as the starting point for its 2-euro commemorative coin of 2014.