Smallholding

A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model.[1] Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact.[2] Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient, but are valued primarily for the rural lifestyle that they provide for the owners, who often do not earn their livelihood from the farm. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in the world, supporting almost two billion people.[3]

Women smallholder farmers in Kenya

Small-scale agriculture is often in tension with industrial agriculture, which finds efficiencies by increasing outputs, monoculture, consolidating land under big agricultural operations, and economies of scale. Certain labor-intensive cash-crops, such as cocoa production in Ghana or Côte d'Ivoire, rely heavily on small holders; globally, as of 2008 90% of cocoa is grown by smallholders.[4] These farmers rely on cocoa for up to 60 to 90 per cent of their income. [5]Similar trends in supply chains exist in other crops like coffee, palm oil, and bananas.[6] In other markets, the importance of small scale agriculture in local economies has also increased food system investment in small holders. Today some companies try to include smallholdings into their value chain, providing seed, feed or fertilizer to improve production. Some say that this model shows benefits for both parties.[7] Especially for smallholders working in commodity crops, climate change introduces an increasing amount of variability to farmer economic viability; for example, Coffee production globally, is under increased threat, and smallholders in East Africa, such as in the Ugandan, Tanzanian or Kenyan industries, are rapidly losing both viable coffee land and productivity of plants.[8] Climate change impacts include shortening or disruption of growing seasons, reductions or increase in the area suitable for agriculture and declines in agricultural yields in many regions of the world.[9]

This is undermining global progress toward poverty alleviation, food security, and sustainable development as envisaged in goal 2 of sustainable development goals. [10]While the current focus has been increasing global food supply under climate change and the role played by smallholder communities, adaptation efforts are still hindered by lack of information on how smallholder farmers are experiencing and responding to climate change. There is lack of detailed, context-specific information on what climate change portends to smallholder farmers in different and widely varying agroecological environments and socio-economic realities, and what management strategies they are employing to deal with these impacts.[11][12]

Because smallholding farms frequently require less industrial inputs and can be an important way to improve food security in less-developed contexts, addressing the productivity and financial sustainability of small holders is an international development priority and measured by indicator 2.3 of Sustainable Development Goal 2.[13][2] Given the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the attendant disruptions of food systems, their role is becoming even more important. [14] As the world seeks to reduce the existing inequalities and poverty gaps, and the fact that over 3 billion people around the world cannot afford healthy diets, smallholder farms have a significant role to play in improving access to food. There are concerns that smallholders cannot play this role adequately if teething problems such as access to information, land, inputs, technology and markets are not properly addressed. Further, there is need to ensure that the need for food does not overshadow the importance to produce it within planetary boundaries that do not compromise the integrity of living systems (the biosphere) which we depend on.[15] For instance, in some geographies, pressure from land grabbing by industrial agriculture and soil degradation can lead small holders seeking economic viability to destroy local ecosystems and biodiversity.[16] Increasing productivity, especially amongst smallholder farms, is an important way to decrease the amount of land needed for farming and slow environmental degradation through processes like deforestation.[17] Since agriculture has such large impacts on climate change, Project Drawdown described "Sustainable Intensification for Smallholders" an important method for climate change mitigation.[17] Enhancing the habitat health, and improving connectivity between ecosystems while maintaining the high agricultural productivity of agricultural lands is desired at every level, and this should be guided by policy, especially on the technological front for smallholders.[18]