Farming not merely needs to sustainably produce nutritious diets, but should also provide livelihoods for farmers, while retaining natural ecosystems and services. Rather than focusing on production principles, this article explores the interrelations between farms and farming systems in the global food system. Evaluating farming systems around the world, we reveal a bewildering diversity. While family farms predominate, these range in size from less than 0.1 ha to more than 10,000 ha, and from hand hoe use to machine-based cultivation, enabling one person to plant more than 500 ha in a day. Yet, farming in different parts of the world is highly interdependent, not least because prices paid for farm produce are largely determined by global markets. Furthermore, the economic viability of farming is a problem, globally. We highlight trends in major regions of the world and explore possible trajectories for the future and ask: Who are the farmers of the future? Changing patterns of land ownership, rental and exchange mean that the concept of ‘what is a farm’ becomes increasingly fluid. Next to declining employment and rural depopulation, we also foresee more environmentally-friendly, less external input dependent, regionalised production systems. This may require the reversal of a global trend towards increasing specialisation to a recoupling of arable and livestock farming, not least for the resilience it provides.
It might also require a slow-down or reversal of the widespread trend of scale enlargement in agriculture. Next to this trend of scale enlargement, small farms persist in Asia: consolidation of farms proceeds at a snail’s pace in South-east Asia and 70% of farms in India are ‘ultra-small’ – less than 0.05 ha. Also in Africa, where we find smallholder farms are much smaller than often assumed (< 1 ha), farming households are often food insecure. A raft of pro-poor policies and investments are needed to stimulate small-scale agriculture as part of a broader focus on rural development to address persistent poverty and hunger.
Smallholder farms will remain an important source of food and income, and a social safety net in absence of alternative livelihood security. But with limited possibilities for smallholders to ‘step-up’, the agricultural engine of growth appears to be broken. Smallholder agriculture cannot deliver the rate of economic growth currently assumed by many policy initiatives in Africa.
Smallholder production is estimated to account for 50–70% of global food production: smallholders play a crucial role in food systems (see section 2 below). We face an ironic and invidious situation where many smallholder households are food insecure themselves. This is a particularly acute, double pronged problem in lower-income countries where smallholder farms are key to both their own food security and to economic development. This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa. We therefore focus particularly on (future) developments in Africa, where food is produced overwhelmingly on smallholder farms, where the growth of population and food demand is most rapid, and where agricultural transformation appears to be most urgent.
Africa’s smallholder farmers need support to build resiliency and sustainability
The trends and transformations required in large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture cannot serve as a policy model for smallholder agriculture in the Global South, which is less capitalised and has a much smaller environmental footprint. Yet, such trends and transformations are highly relevant for the Global South as they impact global markets, and thereby the context within which agriculture will develop.
At the same time the profitability of farming is a huge concern globally. To transform the diverse farms and farming systems across the world, while ensuring their viability, requires strong policy frameworks that can stimulate both higher productivity, more environmentally friendly production methods and allow for the co-existence of diverse farms and farming systems. But what do such possible transformations in agriculture look like in different parts of the world?
