2014: Year of family farming

2014 is the international year of family farming, but what does that mean for you if you don't happen to have your own family farm?! The focus on family farming for the year has been declared by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, to highlight the important role that family farms play in the world's food production, and to raise awareness so that this production can be optimised.

So what is the importance of family farming? Across the world, family farming helps preserve traditional food products, and helps safeguard the sustainable use of natural resources. Ultimately, it provides small-scale farmers with the opportunity to help boost their local economy. By focussing on family farming for the year, the aim is to help increase awareness and understanding of the challenges faced by smallholders, and to find effective ways of supporting family farmers.

Many small farms lack the resources needed to succeed and keep going through difficult times, whether that be through weather conditions, financial issues or lack of manpower. By raising awareness throughout this year, the hope is that governments and other bodies will be forced to direct more help to family farms across the world, of which there are over 500 million. Family farming is of course important in the UK, but even more so in poorer, underdeveloped countries where running and taking care of  land can mean the difference between feeding their families or going hungry. One of the aims of this year of family farming is to try and eradicate hunger and poverty, and ultimately to improve the livelihoods of farm owners across the world which in turn will improve global food security.

Why not be inspired by this year of family farming and get out and planting veg in your own garden or allotment? Or take a trip to a local farm with the kids this summer holidays? Have a look for some local farms in the Milton Keynes area to visit, click here.

timehop

If you're a bit of a techno-wizz on your smart phone you'll more than likely be aware of a new app sweeping across the screens. Taking a new twist on the social media revolution which we appear to be living in, this app takes us back in time, showing what we posted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Foursquare on that day a year, 2 years, 3 years and so on, ago.

There's a few ways you can choose to look at this phenomenon, either...

1. We're living in the past too much... It feels a bit like the app has been created because someone out there knows that we all like browsing back through our photos and tweets and messages, and they want to arrange it better to date for us (cheers!)
2. It gives you a positive look back at how far you've come (hopefully!) over the years
3. Acts as a virtual time-capsule, especially good if you've got a bit of a bad memory
4. A way to daily enjoy memories of some of the important events which have taken place in your life (best if you don't over tweet, otherwise you may have to read your random ramblings about your washing machine or new running trainers, come on, we've all seen it!) 
5. and if you are one likely to over share on social media, then it can be a painful (and maybe helpful) reminder of how we spend too much time on social media...although saying that, timehop is a social media app in itself, so maybe there really is no escape!

What do you think? Is timehop a good or bad idea? I've just got it on my phone and I'm ashamed to say a little addicted... oh look I tweeted about being on a train 2 years ago... how exciting! (see what I mean?!)