Small Family Farm

9 Key excerpts on "Small Family Farm"

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  Public Policy in Agriculture

  Impact on Labor Supply and Household Income

  • Ashok K. Mishra, Davide Viaggi, Sergio Gomez y Paloma(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Sources: Census of Agriculture and Eurostat Farm Structures Survey, USDA, NASS, 2014. Note: Small = <10 acres (or 5 ha for EU) and Large is ≅ 250 acres (or 100 ha for EU).

  International year of the family farm

  The year 2014 was declared as the International Year of the Family Farm (IYFF) and generated a significant amount of interest in defining a family farm and in characterizing different types of family farms. FAO convened an International Working Group on Family Farming (IWG-FF) to review definitions of family farms and provide guidelines to conduct similar reviews around the world. The IWG-FF reached a consensus on an “umbrella” concept. The IWG-FF recognized the importance of the following issues in defining a family farm: pluriactivity (i.e., off-farm sources of income), multifunctionality (i.e., recognizes the benefits other than agricultural production from farming), diversification, sustainability, food security, rural wage work, and community links. This is viewed as a paradigm shift among many international organizations and paves the way to replace previous policies that were exclusively compensatory, with a policy mix that is mainly aimed at promoting investment for developing family farm potential.

  While there is no internationally agreed-upon definition of “family farm”, various stakeholders have adopted definitions. According to Lowder, Skoet, and Singh (2014) the term is most commonly used in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in some developed countries, including the United States and some European countries. Many definitions of family farms intentionally focus on less affluent and/or small farms. The above-named authors found that the most common characteristic among the definitions was to specify that a member of the household owns, operates and/or manages the farm either in part or fully. Other less common characteristics in their review of family farm definitions was a specified minimum amount of labor provided by the family.

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  Human Systems Ecology

  Studies in the Integration of Political Economy, Adaptation, and Socionatural Regions

  • Sheldon Smith(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  7 Local Production, Regional Articulations, and the Small Farmer in Swaziland

  John J. Curry and Christopher E. Seubert

  Introduction

  An approach to technology generation which has exerted considerable influence upon agricultural research in developing countries is Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR/E). Farming systems methodologies, however constituted, take the farm as the unit of production and the household as the unit of consumption, and base research priorities upon the goals of these units, in light of the constraints to achieve these goals presented by the natural and human environments.

  Farming systems research has been critized recently for its inattention to levels of analysis other than the household or family farm. For example, Kervin has argued that:

  The definitions and use of the term "family farm" in FSR field studies tends to oversimplify the multidimensional economic strategies pursued by African rural dwellers (Kervin 1984:1).

  Involvement of family members in migration and off-farm employment can have, Kervin asserts, important effects on the production system employed and the general level of welfare of many African farm families. Russell advocates that social researchers in FSR adopt a "closer focus" upon micro-level processes within domestic units through face-to-face interviewing. This will promote a fuller understanding of the individual's situation, which, according to Russell,"... is not an end in itself, but an essential prerequisite to understanding the whole social formation" (Russell 1984: 2).

  Furthermore, it has been standard FSR practice to characterize family farms as discreet units of observation and analysis. While most FSR models include such non-technical aspects of agricultural production as local sociocultural factors and regional markets in their flow charts, little attention is paid to, "... variations in the human element—which traditionally have often been ignored" (Gilbert, Norman & Winch 1980: 46-47). Consequently, it appears that FSR has remained fixated with local technoenvironmental interactions, systematically ignoring factors which often determine the conditions under which "improved technology" is adopted by farmers.

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  Agriculture in the Third World

  A Spatial Analysis

  • W. B. Morgan(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Analysis at farm and village scale is concerned with the spatial organization of the production system or the geography of the farm itself. No longer are we concerned with demand-centred or advice- or administration-centred systems or more general systems without particular centres reflecting the broad operation of other factors such as food preference, social custom or environment. Instead we are concerned with what Lasuen (1969) in another context has called ‘organizational space’ or the map of linkages within the firm or with its affiliates and subsidiaries. In Third World agriculture this map is concerned mainly with the organization of very large single firms, particularly plantations and state farms, and of groups of small farms, affiliated in village units and having to accept a spatial order in agriculture because of social linkage, or organized in estates or co-operatives. Such spatial order is a matter of degree and varies enormously between different societies each with its own social organization and settlement system. Many peasant farmers are left to make their own decisions and suffer not only from problems of capital, labour and land if they wish to effect improvement, but from a lack of information. In many cases this creates uncertainty in deciding the future; even an approximate estimation of the risks involved becomes impossible. As Ortiz (1973) has shown, an isolated peasant community may exhibit a behaviour pattern in which the economy is logically enough structured but is different from other farming economies. Peasant farmers may even for certain commodities, especially food, create a distinct system of social obligations and traditional prices. ‘In the field of economic relations the population of peasant producers is characterized by its heterogeneity, the small population, the relative independence of each producer, and the limited output of each farmer. It is heterogeneous in the sense that not all producers share the same aspirations, the same knowledge, or the same responsibilities or hold the same amount of capital assets; each unit of production is different from the nexť (Ortiz, 1973, pp. 1–2).

  Some small farms have a spatial patterning within them which affects their productivity and which may be studied as a micro-aspect of agricultural geography. Others, extremely small and compact, have little spatial patterning within them worthy of note. The general lack of medium-sized farms, say approximately 20–200 hectares, in the Third World, is an important feature of the spatial organization of production, and a key to several development problems. Much emphasis in recent years has been put on the need for large-sized production units to achieve economies of scale, and, whilst such scale economies are important in some contexts, it is often not appreciated that the very large production systems so characteristic of agricultural production in certain locations in the Third World are often a reflection of a peripheral development situation in which the success of the system depends on low inputs or on the low incomes of the larger part of the workforce. Both very large and very small farms have been equally characteristic of low productivity situations and of economic and even political dependence on wealthier nations.

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  The Changing World of Farming in Brexit UK

  • Matt Lobley, Michael Winter, Rebecca Wheeler(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Small farms are often more willing to look at their environmental impact and more willing to assign areas of the farm to wildlife. Small farms tend to be more sensitive to the land they occupy and farm in a way which more fits the landscape. Small farms will often be less intensive in their use of the land and be more sustainable for the environment.

  (Joel Woolf, Partner, Head of Agriculture, Foot Anstey)

  Small farms also act as magnets for wildlife that exists at low population densities on their larger neighbours. Small farms are brilliant for monitoring wildlife that exists invisibly on larger areas. On our little farm we have different habitats from our immediate neighbours and have locally unique species. However, we know that some species have a meta-population dynamic that means that they must exist on our neighbours land even though they are invisible there.

  (Huw Jones, Glyn-Coch Farm)

  The available empirical evidence suggests a more complex situation. Evidence from a survey of 504 British farmers in 1993, using the concept of conservation capital4 (1997; 2000), demonstrates that smaller farms (<50 ha) are more likely than larger farms (>200 ha) to have zero stock of conservation capital (39 per cent versus 23 per cent); see Table 6.7

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  Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts on Agriculture in the New Europe

  Post-Communist Transition and Accession to the European Union

  • Serban Scrieciu, S. Serban Scrieciu(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Interestingly, the sharply dual farm structure inherited from Soviet-style agriculture continues to be replicated in some countries, particularly in those with economically stronger farm performance (Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Inequality from this perspective is less pronounced, however, in several of the relatively less advanced farm economies (Romania, Latvia and Lithuania). An exception is Bulgaria, where a strong duality continues to prevail. In Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, the issue of duality has been overall of a lesser concern since the onset of reforms. This is because their agricultural landscapes before 1990 were less dominated by large cooperatives/state farms, and individual land holdings managed to survive during communism to a greater extent (Lerman 2001; Giovarelli and Bledsoe 2001; Small 2003).

  On subsistence-oriented agriculture

  Individual agricultural holdings operating on physically small parcels of land represent a mix of subsistence, semi-subsistence and commercially viable farms. In some publications, Eurostat classifies small farms as those utilizing less than 5 ha of utilized agricultural area (Petrick 2007). Their numbers are well above the EU-15 average (of around 50 per cent of total holdings) in at least half of the eleven CEE countries being explored in this book, especially in Romania and Bulgaria (based on data in European Commission 2010). Though it is difficult to determine a single definition of smallness (Hubbard 2009), the focus in this chapter is on farms that are small not only from a physical measure perspective, but also from an economical point of view. This is because farms with small (fertile) land areas can also be highly specialized and represent active economic enterprises, for example in intensive horticulture, and specialist pigs and poultry (Davidova et al.

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  Arid Lands

  Today And Tomorrow

  • Charles Hutchinson(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  but farming systems have tended to be narrowly focused on localized production increases (11). The term farming systems as we use it includes household gardens as well as nutrition. health. subjective well-being. the larger political and economic contexts. and social and environmental sustainability. some of which are left out of definitions used by many practitioners (12. 13. 14). We limit the scope of this paper to arid lands farming systems based on settled agriculture. and do not address the nomadic-pastoral farming systems or urban food systems. Household Gardens. Household gardens are a production strategy that supplements the major sources of food and income and are often situated close to the main household residence. though they may be mixed in with field crops or planted as field borders. They often have no distinct 885 886 physical or structural boundaries, and blend with other elements of the farming system. Gardens can be quite large, 1000 square meters or more, or very small, only a fruit tree and some herbs and greens growing in containers in the dooryard. Development. Household gardens, because of their unique characteristics, may be able to play an important role in supporting development, which we define as the process of improving the well-being (15) of the poor majority of the population in ways that are sustainable socially, economically and environmentally over the long term (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 72). Many of those involved in promoting gardens in arid lands focus on the search for production and processing technologies. As with any method of development, however, social, political, economic and ecological factors are equally impor-tant, and we will emphasize these here. CULTURE AND HORTICULTURE: TRADITIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL GARDENS Household gardens, especially in the Third World, are often easy to categorize into one of two basic types which reflect and parallel a division in larger-scale agriculture.

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  Farming Systems In The Nigerian Savanna

  Research And Strategies For Development

  • David Norman(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  At the center of the interaction are farmers themselves, exercising some measure of control and choice regarding the types and results of the interactions. To farmers, the means of livelihood and the social and cultural welfare of their households are intimately linked and cannot be separated. We will, then, frequently refer to the farming household or family rather than just the farmer. 1 The members of the farming household, in achieving a specific farming system, allocate certain quantities and qualities of basic types of inputs--land, labor, capital, and management--to three processes--crops, livestock, and off-farm enterprises--in a manner which, given their knowledge, will maximize goals they strive to reach. Figure 2.1 illustrates graphically some of the possible underlying determinants of a farming system.

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  Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes of Southeastern Brazil

  • Carla Gheler-Costa, Maria Carolina Lyra-Jorge, Luciano Martins Verdade, Carla Gheler-Costa, Maria Carolina Lyra-Jorge, Luciano Martins Verdade(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Open Poland

    (Publisher)

  16 The Role of Family Farms in Environmental Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes In Brazil, family farming accounts for approximately 30% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the agricultural sector because approximately 30% of all agricultural land is under the possession of family farmers, who contribute approximately 30-50% of food security at a global level (Altieri, 2004). In São Paulo, family farms cover an area of more than 2 million hectares, and in the Corumbataí river basin, specifically in the cities studied (Analândia, Ipeúna and Corumbataí), family farms comprised of an area of approximately 7,000 hectares, which produces food and environmental services. The family farm includes forest agricultural production, fishing, ranching and aquaculture that are managed and operated by a family, and it is predominantly dependent on family labour, both by women and men. Family farms grow traditional food crops and contribute to the protection of agricultural biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources. In the Corumbataí river basin, family farms are geared to the production of beans, rice, cotton, garlic, corn, milk, meat, poultry, eucalypt, sugar cane, vegetables, processed products and distilled liquor. These products cater mainly to the local demand, which is culturally well accepted and contributes to the economy. For Cullen Jr et al. (2000), the type of neighbourhood and land use can profoundly affect biological diversity, ecological processes and conservation. In the case of the Corumbataí river basin, we know little about the rural population and how it relates to nature. On a local scale, residents of rural areas in the basin are actors that play an important role in conserving (or not) local ecosystems as they still relate to the natural environment through their farming practices and the use of water resources.

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  Development Economics

  Theory and Practice

  • Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Particularly important is self-employment in the RNFE. In Japan, Europe, and Taiwan, farm incomes are typically less than half the total income earned by smallholder households. For this, the local economy has to offer investment opportunities in formal or informal activities. Territorial development, supporting a vibrant local economy either linked to agriculture or based on decentralized economic activities, is thus an important factor for the survival of the family farm (Schejtman and Berdegué, 2004). The concept of clusters of economic activity, analyzed in Chapter 8, can be quite effective for this purpose. 7. Economies of scale in farming and in marketing. There are economies of scale in production due to the indivisibility of machinery, and in marketing due to the emergence of integrated value chains and supermarket contracts rewarding delivery of large product volumes with high quality standards. There exist institutional arrangements that allow smallholders to take advantage of these economies of scale, in spite of their small farm sizes (Reardon et al., 2009). In Europe, the US, and Japan, most family farmers are members of cooperatives that help with marketing contracts. In India, Operation Flood, with 70,000 dairy cooperatives and 9 million members, has been a major success in linking smallholder producers, often landless dairy cattle owners, to remunerative markets (Cunningham, 2009). THE ECONOMICS OF FARM HOUSEHOLDS 270 | R ISK AND S ELF -I NSURANCE IN H OUSEHOLD B EHAVIOR Farming is a highly risky business. Poor people are risk-averse because a negative shock can have devastating consequences for them, operating as they are at the margin of survival. At the same time, formal insurance is generally not available to these households. The combination of risk, risk aversion, and insurance market failures implies that farm households must devise self-insurance strategies to reduce their income and consumption risks.

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