Despite the importance of this farming activity in providing food security to millions – particularly in South and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America – information on the subnational distribution of smallholdings can be hard to find. To address this, researchers based in the US, Canada and Australia joined forces to generate a map of the mean amount of land per farming household.
The scientists faced a number of hurdles. "There are no set definitions of what 'small' means in terms of agriculture, and the phrase can mean different things in different places," Leah Samberg of the University of Minnesota told environmentalresearchweb. "A five hectare farm would be tiny in the US, but huge in Ethiopia."
The team showed that the combined output of developing world regions dependent on small-scale farming (i.e. with an average farm size of less than 5 hectares) contributes more than 80% of global rice production and 75% of the world’s output of groundnuts and palm oil. Smallholder-dense regions also provide a large proportion of the world’s millet (60%), cassava (60%), cotton (40%) and sugarcane (40%), according to the study. And such regions send 70% of the calories they produce towards direct human consumption, compared to 55% globally.
ERL" href="http://images.iop.org/objects/erw/news/12/2/32/pic1.jpg">Mean agricultural area
Samberg and colleagues drew on household microdata and satellite images of landcover to classify agricultural activity in a way that highlights smallholder contributions to the global food picture. The data cover 2412 subnational units in 83 countries across South and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.
The group’s approach hinges on identifying farmers rather than farms and using this information as a reference point. It demands that the team pays close attention when navigating the census data, while acknowledging that this information doesn’t always tell the whole story. "Someone can live on a farm, but work a factory job to pay the bills," said Samberg.
To evaluate the prevalence of smaller or larger farms, the scientists use a metric dubbed "mean agricultural area" (MAA), which is defined as hectares of agricultural land divided by the number of farming households.
Units with an MAA of less than five hectares play a dominant role in Asia, the researchers found. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion drops slightly with smallholder units producing half of the food calories in the region – supported by places with a medium-density of farm households, which account for another 26%. The situation changes again in Latin America, with 70% of food calories produced in regions with large and very large MAAs.
The team hopes that its results will help not just policy makers, but also technology developers in tackling issues such as food security, poverty reduction and conservation. One of the next steps in the project is to identify factors that lead smallholder regions to be successful.
The scientists, from the University of Minnesota, the University of British Columbia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, published their findings in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).
Related links
- Subnational distribution of average farm size and smallholder contributions to global food production Leah H Samberg et al 2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 124010
- ERL
- Leah Samberg