To celebrate the International Year of Family Farming, The State of Food and Agriculture 2014: Innovation in
family farming (SOFA 2014) offers a groundbreaking study of family farming.The report contains the first comprehensive estimate of the number of family farms in the world – at least 500 million.This means that families run about nine out of ten farms. Additional analysis shows that family farms occupy a large share of the world’s agricultural land and produce about 80 percent of the world’s food. However, while family farmers are key to food security worldwide, they have also been considered by many as an obstacle to development and have been deprived of government support.