World Food Day on Wednesday (16th October) drew attention to sustainable means of addressing the challenges facing food production and human wellbeing. Events taking place around the world sought to educate people on means of creating a more sustainable food system to overcome the challenges of hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation.

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The problems facing the would-be architects of a sustainable food growing are huge; today, nearly one billion people go to bed hungry each night and almost half of the global population are thought to be either over- or under-fed. By 2030, it is estimated that 47 percent of the world will live in areas of high water stress. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 25 percent of all global land has already been highly degraded and can no longer be used to grow food.

This year, the UN-sponsored World Food Day focused on 'Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition', and aimed to show the massive contribution that small-scale biologically diverse farm systems can make to food security, the maintenance of a nutritious diet and reductions to the environmental impact of agriculture. Smallholder farmers can use agroecological or environmentally friendly farming practices to produce more nutritious foods often with greater yields than conventional farming operations.

However, in many global regions research funding is allocated under the strong influence of the private sector and will tend to focus on market- or product-based solutions. For example, in the UK, only 1 percent of research funding goes to agroecology projects compared to 15 percent on genetically modified crops and 13 percent on marker-assisted breeding.

The UN has declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming, pointing out that smaller-scale agriculture can play a massive role in food and nutrition security and environmental preservation. In the EU, too, family farming has been accorded more attention under the reformed Common Agricultural Policy after years of neglect and French President François Hollande last month announced that agricultural subsidies would be restructured to benefit smaller farmers.

Smallholder farms are more likely to grow diverse, nutrient-rich crops than conventional farms, which tend to focus on starchy cash crops – including maize, soy, and wheat – that do not provide adequate nutrition or represent genetically diverse breeding stock.

The Worldwatch Institute, a civil society research organisation based in Washington, DC has thrown its weight behind the UN's calls to protect small-scale, biodiverse agriculture. Danielle Nierenberg of the Institute and food policy group Food Tank said earlier this week, "Small-scale farmers hold the key to cultivating and preserving biodiversity in agriculture. They grow indigenous fruits, vegetables, and legumes all over the world that not only make up diverse, healthy diets, but also provide much-needed nourishment for soils, conserve limited water resources, and cut down on the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

Nierenberg pointed to studies that have shown sustainable methods used on family farms can improve yields by up to 79 percent, compared to conventional agriculture. The hugely influential IAASTD report, commissioned by the World Bank in 2009, made such recommendations to alleviate poverty and achieve food security; it is estimated that 800 million people working in agriculture around the world live below the poverty line, and approximately half of the world's hungry are smallholder farmers. Therefore, Nierenberg said, tackling these issues with culturally appropriate, inductive measures will provide tangible benefits.

Ellen Gustafson, also of Food Tank, said, "Providing these farmers with the resources that they need to provide food for themselves and their communities will go a long way toward alleviating food insecurity and increasing incomes where most needed."

On World Food Day, Gustaferson's Food Tank highlighted six ways in which diverse, small-scale agriculture can provide environmental benefits and preserve food security.

1. Improving nutrition and food security – Many case studies from Madagascar, Iran, India, and Bangladesh have confirmed that diverse diets are correlated with better nutrition, particularly in children. In a landmark study that covered ten countries on three continents, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that diverse diets are positively associated with access to food and increased food security. Although UK environment secretary Owen Paterson has championed GM solutions such as 'golden rice' as a means to improve nutrition, others are sceptical and maintain that this 'quick fix' approach will at best treat a symptom of a systemic problem.

Dr. Samson Tsou of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) said eating a range of vegetables and maintaining variety in diets and local farming systems is the key to avoiding malnutrition.

2. Preserving biodiversity – In the 20th century alone, 75 percent of the planet's genetic resources were lost. FAO has warned that losing crop biodiversity poses a serious threat to global food security. By cultivating a wide variety of indigenous crops, small-scale farmers are preserving biodiversity in agriculture.

3. Increasing yields – Polyculture operations—farms growing many different varieties of crops—can produce yields between 20 and 60 percent greater than monocultures.

4. Building soil health – Land and soil degradation can cause a loss of nearly 50 percent in crop productivity. But practices such as cover cropping and intercropping can help to rebuild lost nutrients in degraded soil by creating shade and stimulating the growth of beneficial microorganisms.

5. Conserving water – Healthy soils are able to absorb water and deliver it to plant roots more effectively than degraded soils, and require less irrigation. By enriching soils through the cultivation of legumes such as the pigeon pea, cowpea, and clover, which help to preserve soil moisture through insulation from sun and wind, farmers can cut down on their use of valuable and limited water resources. Cover crops have also been shown to reduce nitrate runoff into groundwater reserves.

6. Mitigating the effects of climate change – According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), diversified and indigenous crops are typically more resilient to extreme weather conditions, including drought, flooding, and high temperatures as a result of climate change. FAO has found that traditional farmers have implemented indigenous and heterogeneous crop varieties as tools to recover from natural disasters. Cultivating a wide variety of species of plants also can help insulate farmers against the risk of plant disease.