The Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and the International Land Coalition (ILC) have signed a Letter of Agreement (LOA) to convene the ILC Asia Family Farming Platform, starting a new chapter of collaboration to strengthen the voices, rights, and leadership of family farmers across the region.
For 2026, the platform will focus on three key priorities:
1. Strengthening platform governance and engagement. Ensuring regular meetings among platform members and creating more opportunities for meaningful participation and collaboration.
2. Building capacity and amplifying farmers’ voices in the Rio Convention processes. The platform will strengthen members’ understanding of the UNCCD, UNCBD and UNFCCC processes and support greater farmer participation in the respective COPs.
A key focus will be strengthening Farmers’ Caucuses within these processes. Farmers should not be seen only as beneficiaries of policies and programmes, but as actors and rights-holders in global environmental governance.
Through stronger farmer-led positions and evidence, the caucuses can help bring issues such as secure land tenure, access to resources, women’s and youth rights, traditional knowledge, sustainable production systems, biodiversity, land restoration, climate resilience and farmer-led innovation into global policy discussions.
3. Co-hosting a Regional Gathering on Women Farmers’ Rights and Recognition. In partnership with NLC Cambodia, the platform will convene a regional gathering as part of the International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF) 2026.
Women are at the heart of family farming—contributing to production, livestock management, food processing, nutrition, natural resource management and the transmission of knowledge. Yet many women farmers continue to face unequal access to land, finance, markets, technology, services and decision-making.
The regional gathering will provide a space to:
- Elevate the voices and leadership of women farmers, including Indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fisherfolk and other marginalised groups
- Strengthen partnerships among women farmers’ organisations, governments, civil society, research institutions, donors and UN agencies
- Share experiences and innovations on land rights, tenure security, climate resilience and sustainable agriculture
- Develop a shared regional action agenda and policy recommendations to strengthen women’s rights, knowledge systems and participation in sustainable agrifood systems
2026 is a strategic moment to move from recognition to action. By bringing family farmers, particularly women farmers and other marginalised groups, into policy and environmental processes as rights-holders and decision-makers, the Family Farming Platform can help ensure that their realities and solutions are reflected in the policies shaping the future of our food systems, land and environment.
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