Chapter 2shows that the wide diversity of agricultural forms stems from the political and social structures rooted in historical trajectories, where representations have been forged by power relations and the dissemination of technical progress. This diversity and its reasons invite us to make an effort, necessarily reductive, to define, characterize and measure family farming models, and to clarify what makes them a political and analytical category. To name the production units of the agricultural sector, several categories are mobilized by actors, all of which pertain to different professional spheres but do so in interaction with each other. There are four broad domains in interaction within which categories are gener- ated and used to describe agricultural production actors.

In December 2011, the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly decided to designate 2014 as the “International Year of Family Farming”. The resolution “encourages member States to undertake activities within their respective national development programmes in support of the International Year of Family Farming”.This publication responds to a request from AFD, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (MAEDI) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood and Forestry (MAAF)[ 1 ]. It provides an overview of the debates about and around family farming , its place, its roles in the issues and challenges of agriculture at the beginning of this 21st century, and its inclusion in public polices. It aims, more modestly, and following on from the declaration of the International Year of Family Farming , to determine some of the knowledge acquired in order to gain a better understanding of this category of “family farming”, which is multifaceted and much less defined than its mobilisation in current debates might suggest. Indeed, one might assume that everything has already been said and written about this form of farming , as it has been widely analysed and discussed by professional and trade union organisations, research, public administration, development actors and political bodies and, as a result, find the renewed interest in it surprising. Yet it has to be recognised that the changes taking place in agriculture and agrifood systems worldwide – some of which figure prominently in the media, such as large-scale land grabbing or the restructuring of agrifood chains – raise the question of its viability. They call for a re-examining of family farms in all their diversity and ultimat

The International Year of Family Farming has focused world attention on the economic and social role played by this type of agriculture, as well as on its potential for meeting global challenges. It has also identified weaknesses and the need for decisive, far-reaching public action to overcome these. However, policy making and implementation require a clear-cut statistical definition of family farming at the global level, as well as a detailed picture of the various forms this agriculture may take at the national level. Hence the proposal to characterise family farming by the conjunction between the domestic unit and the production unit, and to determine criteria for fine-tuning this definition in each country.