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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Small Is Bountiful
  • Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 11:11:43 -0600


Small Is Bountiful
Peter Rosset / The Ecologist, v.29, i.8, Dec99
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Small-Farm-Benefits-Rosset.htm
[Figure 1: Total production per unit area versus farm size in 15 countries.*]
* From a previous paper by Dr. Rosset, Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture In
the Context of Global Trade Negotiations Sep99 ]

Large farms impose a "scorched earth" policy on the land.

For more than a century, economists have predicted the demise of the small
farm, which they label "backward, unproductive and inefficient". But in fact,
far from being stuck in the past, small-farm agriculture provides a
productive, efficient and ecological vision for the future.

Today's ongoing process of liberalisation in international agricultural
trade--taken a step further in the WTO Millennium Round last month in
Seattle--is having dramatically negative effects on small farmers everywhere.
If small farms are worth preserving, then now is the time to educate the
world's economists and policy-makers about why we should do so. But are small
farms worth preserving? Can they possibly compete with large farms? what are
their benefits, in economic and ecological terms?

The Arguments for Small Farms

In arguing the case for the continuation--indeed, for a resurgence--of small
farms, it is important to note three key points. The first point is that,
though small farmers have been driven out of rural areas across the world in
their millions over the last five decades, they still persist. In many areas,
such as the US, they continue to be numerically dominant. In the 'Third
world', they are central to the production of staple foods. The predictions
of their demise continue to be premature.

The second point is that small farms are far from being as unproductive or
inefficient as many economists would have us believe. In
fact--crucially--there is ample evidence that a small-farm model of
agricultural development can produce far more food than a large-farm pattern
ever could.

The third point is that small farms have multiple functions which benefit
both society and the biosphere, and go far beyond the production of a
particular commodity. These should be seriously valued and considered before
we blithely accept yet another round of anti-small-farm policy measures
handed down by the WTO and its client governments.

Small-Farm Virtues in the USA

Perhaps surprisingly, the US government--one of the most committed to
liberalisation and corporate agriculture in the world--agrees with my
analysis of the virtues of small farms. The US Department of Agriculture's
(USDA) National Commission on Small Farms released a landmark report in 1998
entitled A Time to Act. [2] what the USDA calls the "public value of small
farms" in this report includes:

* Diversity: Small farms embody a diversity of ownership, of cropping
systems, of landscapes, of biological organisation, culture and traditions. A
varied farm structure contributes to biodiversity, a diverse and
aesthetically-pleasing rural landscape, and open space.
* Environmental benefits: Responsible management of the natural resources
of soil, water and wildlife on the 60 per cent of all US farms less than 180
acres in size, produces significant environmental benefits.
* Empowerment and community responsibility: Decentralised land-ownership
produces more-equitable economic opportunity for people in rural areas. This
can provide a greater sense of personal responsibility and feeling of control
over one's life. Landowners who rely on local businesses and services for
their needs are also more likely to have a stake in the well-being of the
community and its citizens.
* Personal Connection to Food: Most consumers have little connection to
agriculture and, as a consequence, they have little connection with nature,
and lack an appreciation of the farmer's role. Through farmers' markets and
community-supported agriculture, consumers can connect with the people
growing their food.
* Economic foundations: In various states and regions of the US, small
farms are vital to the economy.

Small-Farm Virtues in the Third World

A similar pattern holds in the Third world, where policies promoting large
farm, export-orientated agriculture have increasingly eroded the viability of
small farms.

In traditional farming communities, the family farm is central to the
sustainability of agricultural production. On the small farm, productive
activities, labour mobilisation, consumption patterns, ecological knowledge
and common interests in long-term maintenance of the farm as a resource,
contribute to a stable and lasting economic enterprise. Short-term gain at
the risk of degrading essential resources places both the family and the farm
at risk of collapse. Family farmers regularly achieve higher and more
dependable production from their land than large farms operating in similar
environments. Labour-intensive practices such as manuring, limited tillage,
ridging, terracing, composting organic matter and recycling plant products
into the productive process enhance soil conservation and fertility. [3]

Small farmers have developed, sometimes over the course of 5,000 years, a
variety of unique technologies, crops and farming systems. Perhaps most
important in an era of diminishing non-renewable resources, small farmers
across the Third World produce bountiful harvests with minimal recourse to
expensive external inputs such as pesticides, machines or genetically
modified seeds. [4]

Small-Farm Productivity

How many times have we been told by 'experts' that large farms are more
productive than small farms? Or that they are more efficient? Yet the actual
data, when examined, shows exactly the reverse for productivity: that smaller
farms produce far more per unit area than larger farms. So why is the
establishment crusade against small farmers continuing? One reason is that,
because the conventional method of measuring 'productivity' is flawed, we are
receiving the wrong answers to our questions.

Flawed Measurements

If we are to fairly evaluate the relative productivity of small and large
farms, we must discard 'yield' as our measurement tool. 'Yield' means the
production per unit area of a single crop--for example, "metric tons of corn
per hectare" - and is the basic measurement used by economists to assess the
productivity of farmland. Often, the highest yield of a single crop is
achieved by planting it alone on a field--in a monoculture. But, while a
monoculture may allow for a high yield of one crop, it produces nothing else
of use to the farmer. The bare ground between the crop rows - empty 'niche
space' in ecological terms - invites weed infestation. The presence of weeds
means the farmer must then invest labour in weeding or capital in herbicide.

Large farmers tend to plant monocultures because they are the simplest to
manage with heavy machinery. Small farmers, on the other hand, are more
likely to plant crop mixtures--'intercropping'--where the empty niche space
that would otherwise produce weeds is occupied by other crops. They also tend
to combine or rotate crops and livestock, with manure serving to replenish
soil fertility. Such integrated farming systems produce far more per unit
area than monocultures. Though the yield per unit area of one crop - corn,
for example--may be lower, the total output per unit area, often composed of
more than a dozen crops and various animal products, can be far higher. If we
are to compare small and large farms, we should use total output, rather than
yield, as a more accurate measure of productivity. Total output is the sum of
everything a small farmer produces: various grains, fruits, vegetables,
fodder, animal products, etc. When we do this, a very different picture
emerges.

Surveying the data, we indeed find that small farms almost always produce far
more agricultural output per unit area than larger farms. This is now widely
recognised by agricultural economists across the political spectrum, as the
"inverse relationship between farm size and output". [5] Even leading
development economists at the World Bank have come around to this view, to
the point that they now accept that redistribution of land to small farmers
would lead to greater overall productivity. [6]

The four charts accompanying this article illustrate just some of the many
examples of how productivity and farm size across the world show this inverse
relationship: as the size of the farm increases, so its total productivity
decreases.

There is a variety of explanations for the greater productivity of small
farms. Some of these are:

* Multiple cropping: small farmers are more likely to intercrop various
crops on the same field, plant multiple times during the year, and integrate
crops, livestock and even aquaculture, making more intensive use of space and
time.
* Output composition: large farms are orientated toward land-extensive
enterprises, like cattle grazing or extensive grain monocultures, while small
farmers emphasise labour and resource-intensive use of land.
* Irrigation: small farmers may make more efficient use of irrigation.
* Labour quality: while small farms generally use family labour - which
is personally committed to the success of the farm - large farms use
relatively alienated hired labour. Small farms often apply more labour per
unit area.
* Input use: the mix on small farms favours non-purchased inputs like
manure and compost, while large farms tend to use purchased inputs like
agrochemicals.
* Resource use: large farms are less committed to management of other
resources - such as forest and aquatic resources - which combine with the
land to produce a greater quantity and better quality of production.

Small-Farm Efficiency

While small farms, then, are clearly more productive than large farms in
terms of output, claims are often made that large farms are still more
efficient. But this claim, too, is misleading.

The definition of 'efficiency' most widely accepted by conventional
economists is that of 'total factor productivity' - a sort of averaging of
the efficiency of use of all the different factors that go into production,
including land, labour, inputs, capital, etc. Tomich [7] provides data from
the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, which shows that small farms have greater total
factor productivity than large farms in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Mexico and
Colombia. More recently, the same pattern has been found in Honduras. [8]

In industrial countries, the pattern is less clear. The consensus position is
probably that very small farms are inefficient because they can't make full
use of expensive equipment, while very large farms are also inefficient
because of management and labour problems inherent in large operations. Thus,
peak efficiency is likely to be achieved on mid-sized farms that have one or
two hired labourers. In other words, even in the 'developed' countries there
is no reason to believe that large farms are more efficient - indeed, they
may be quite inefficient.

But there is far more to the economic importance of small farms once we move
outside the farm gate and ask questions about economic development.

Small Farms in Economic Development

Surely more bushels of grain is not the only goal of farm production; farm
resources must also generate wealth for the overall improvement of rural
life--including better housing, education, health services, transportation,
local business diversification, and more recreational and cultural
opportunities.

In the US, the crucial question was asked more than half a century ago: what
does the growth of largescale, industrial agriculture mean for rural towns
and communities? Walter Goldschmidt's classic 1940s study of California's San
Joaquin Valley compared areas dominated by large corporate farms with those
still characterised by smaller family farms. [9]

In farming communities dominated by large corporate farms, Goldschmidt found,
nearby towns died off. Mechanisation meant that fewer local people were
employed, and absentee ownership meant that farm families themselves were no
longer to be found. In these corporate-farm towns, the income earned in
agriculture was drained off into larger cities to support distant
enterprises, while in towns surrounded by family farms, the income circulated
among local business establishments, generating jobs and community
prosperity. Where family farms predominated, there were more local
businesses, paved streets and sidewalks, schools, parks, churches, clubs and
newspapers, better services, higher employment and more civic participation.
Studies conducted since Goldschmidt's original work confirm that his findings
remain true today. [10]

If we turn toward the Third World, we find similar benefits to be derived
from a small farm economy. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a
grassroots organisation in Brazil which helps landless labourers to organise
occupations of idle land belonging to wealthy landlords. [11] When the
movement began, in the mid-1980s, the mostly conservative mayors of rural
towns were violently opposed to MST land occupations in surrounding areas. In
recent times, however, their attitude has changed. Most of their towns are
very depressed economically, and occupations can give local economies a much
needed boost. Typical occupations consist of 1,000 to 3,000 families, who
turn idle land into productive farms. They sell their produce in the
market-place of the local towns and buy their supplies from local merchants.
Not surprisingly, those towns with nearby MST settlements are now better off
economically than other similar towns, and many mayors now actually petition
the MST to carry out occupations near their towns. [13]

It is clear, then, that local and regional economic development benefits from
a small-farm economy, as do the life and prosperity of rural towns. The
question now must be: can we re-create small farm economies in places where
they have been lost in order to improve the well-being of the poor?

Improving Social Welfare Through Land Reform

Recent history shows that redistribution of land to landless rural families
can be a very effective way to improve rural welfare. Sobhan examined the
outcome of virtually every land reform programme carried out in the Third
World since World War II, [14] When quality land was genuinely distributed to
the poor, and the power of the rural oligarchy broken, real, measurable
poverty reduction and improvement in human welfare were invariably the
result. Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan are all good examples of this.
In contrast, countries with reforms that gave only poor quality land to
beneficiaries, and/or failed to alter the rural power structures that work
against the poor, have failed to make a major dent in rural poverty. Mexico
and The Philippines are typical cases of the latter. [15]

In Brazil, IBASE, a social and economic research centre, studied the impact
on government coffers of legalising MST-style land occupations. When the
landless poor occupy land and force the government to legalise their
holdings, it implies costs: compensation to the former landowner, legal
expenses, credit for the new farmers, etc. Nevertheless, the total cost to
the State of maintaining the same number of people in an urban shanty town -
including the services and infrastructure they use - exceeds, in just one
month, the yearly cost of legalising land occupations. [16]

The conclusion to be drawn from such case studies is a clear one. Land reform
to create a small-farm economy is not only good for local economic
development, but is also a more effective social policy than driving the poor
out of rural areas and into burgeoning cities.

Ecological Farming

See Figure 1 at bottom

The benefits of small farms extend, of course, beyond the economic sphere.
Whereas large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on
resource management - no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures - small
farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To
begin with, small farmers utilise a broad array of resources and have a
vested interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming
systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant biodiversity
within the farm. As such, small farms provide valuable 'ecosystem services'
to society at large.

In the US, small farmers devote 17 per cent of their area to woodlands,
compared with only five per cent on large farms. Small farms maintain nearly
twice as much of their land in "soil-improving uses", including cover crops
and green manures. [18] In the Third World, peasant farmers show a tremendous
ability to prevent and even reverse land degradation, including soil erosion.
[19] In many areas, traditional farmers have developed and/or inherited
complex farming systems, which are highly adapted to local conditions. This
allows them to sustainably manage production in harsh environments while
meeting their subsistence needs, without depending on mechanisation, chemical
fertilisers, pesticides or other technologies of modem agricultural science.
[20]

Compared with the ecological wasteland of a modern export plantation, the
small farm landscape contains a myriad of biodiversity: the forested areas
from which wild foods and leaf litter are extracted; the wood lot; the farm
itself, with intercropping, agroforestry, and large and small livestock; the
fish pond; the back garden, allow for the preservation of hundreds if not
thousands of wild and cultivated species.

Free Trade: The Enemy of Small-Farm Agriculture

If we are concerned about food production, small farms are more productive.
If our concern is efficiency, they are more efficient. If our concern is
poverty, land reform to create a small-farm economy offers a clear solution.
If the loss of biodiversity or the sustainability of agriculture concerns us,
small farms offer a crucial part of the solution.

Despite decades of anti-small-farm policies adopted by nation states, small
farmers have clung to the soil in amazing numbers. But today we stand at a
crossroads. As a world, we are poised to take steps toward global economic
integration that pose far greater threats to small farmers than they have
ever faced. Trade liberalisation and globalisation pose grave threats to the
continued existence of small farms. Over the past couple of decades, Third
World countries have been encouraged, cajoled, threatened and generally
pressured into unilaterally reducing the level of protection offered to their
domestic food producers in the face of well-financed foreign competitors.
Through participation in GATT, NAFTA, the World Bank, the IME and the WTO,
they have reduced or eliminated tariffs, quotas and other barriers to
unlimited imports of food products. [21]

Typically, Third World economies have been inundated with cheap food from
major grain-exporting countries. For a variety of reasons (subsidies, both
hidden and open, industrialised production, etc.) this food is more often
than not put on the international market at prices below the local cost of
production. That drives down the prices that local farmers receive for what
they produce, with two related effects.

First, a sudden drop in farm prices can drive poor, indebted farmers off the
land in the short term - they simply cannot compete with the cheap,
subsidised products of giant monoculture farms. Second, a more subtle effect
kicks in. As crop prices stay low over the medium term, profits per unit area
-per acre or hectare - stay low as well. That means the minimum number of
hectares needed to support a family rises, contributing to the abandonment of
farmland by smaller, poorer farmers - land which then winds up in the hands
of the larger, better-off farmers who can compete in a low-price environment
by virtue of having a lot of land. They overcome the low profit per hectare
trap precisely by owning vast areas which add up to good profits in total,
even if they represent very little on a per hectare basis. The end result of
both mechanisms is the further concentration of farmland in the hands of a
few large farmers. [22]

A penalty is paid for this land concentration in terms of productivity - as
large farmers turn to monocultures and machines to farm such vast tracts -
and in terms of the environment - as these large mechanised monocultures come
to depend on agrochemicals. Jobs are lost as machines replace human labour
and draft animals. Rural communities die out as farmers and farm workers
migrate to cities. Natural resources deteriorate as nobody is left who cares
about them. Finally, food security is placed in jeopardy: domestic food
production falls in the face of cheap imports; land that was once used to
grow local food is used to produce export crops for distant markets; people
now depend on money - rather than land - to feed themselves; and fluctuations
in employment, wages and world food prices can drive millions into hunger.

Cause for Hope?

But, fortunately, there is less than unanimous support among the world's
nations for the increasingly-global US-led corporate farming agenda. A number
of countries have taken up the call made in Chapter 14 of Agenda 21, the
declaration drawn up at the 1992 Earth Summit, that "agricultural policy
review, planning and integrated programming [be carried out] in the light of
the multifunctional aspects of agriculture, particularly with regard to food
security and sustainable development."

According to this viewpoint, agriculture produces not only commodities, but
also livelihoods, cultures, ecological services, etc. - and, as such, the
products of agriculture cannot be treated in the same way as the products of
other industries. While a shoe, for example, is a relatively simple good,
whose world price can be set by supply and demand, and the trade in which can
be regulated through tariffs or de-regulated by removing them, the products
of farming are very different.

The Japanese government, in a preparatory document for last month's Seattle
negotiations, put it this way:

"Agriculture not only produces/supplies agricultural products, but also
contributes to food security, by reducing the risks caused by unexpected
events or a possible food shortage in the future, to the preservation of land
and environment, to the creation of a good landscape and to the maintenance
of the local community, through production activities in harmony with the
natural environment. All of these roles are known as the 'multifunctionality'
of agriculture... Market mechanisms alone cannot lead to the realisation of
an agricultural production method that will embody the multifunctionality of
agriculture." [25]

Norway has also endorsed the concept of 'multifunctionality' as the basis for
special treatment of farming, [26] as has the European Union to some extent,
[27] and a number of other countries. [28]

More governments need to swiftly endorse this agenda. Ignoring the multiple
functions of agriculture has caused untold suffering and ecological
destruction in the past. The time is long overdue to recognise the full range
of contributions that agriculture - and small farms in particular - make to
human societies and to the biosphere. Farms are not factories that churn Out
jeans or tennis racquets, and we cannot let narrow arguments of simple
economic expediency destroy the world's agricultural legacy.

All of us should demand, loudly and firmly, that our governments respect the
multi-functionality of agriculture and grant each country true sovereignty
over food and farming, by stepping back from free trade in agricultural
products. Instead of deepening policies that damage small farms, we should
implement policies to develop small-farm economies. These might include
genuine land reforms, tariff protection for staple foods - so that farmers
receive fair prices - and the reversal of biases in policies for credit -
technology, research, education, subsidies, taxes and infrastructure, which
unfairly advance large farms at the expense of smaller ones. By doing this,
we will strike at the root causes of poverty, hunger, rural decline and
degradation of ecosystems around the world.

Peter Rosset, PhD, is Executive Director of Food First, based in Oakland,
California, USA, and co-author of World Hunger: Twelve Myths, published in
1998 by Earthscan and Grove Press. website: www.foodfirst.org

References:

(1.) Kautsky, K. 1906. La Question Agraire. Paris: Maspero.

(2.) United States Department of Agriculture. 1998. A Time to Act: A
Report of the USDA National Commission on Small Farms. USDA Miscellaneous
Publication 1545.

(3.) Netting. R. Mcc. 1993. Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families
and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

(4.) Ibid.

(5.) Baarret, C. B. 'On Price Risk and the Inverse Farm
Size-Productivity Relationship', University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department
of Agricultural Economics Staff Paper Series no.369, 1993.

(6.) Deinioger, K. 1999. Making Negotiated Land Reform work: Initial
Experience from Colombia, Brazil and South Africa. Washington DC: The World
Bank.

(7.) Tomich, T. P., Kilby, P. and Johnston, B. F. 1995. Transforming
Agrarian Economies: Opportunities Seized, Opportunities Missed. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.

(8.) Gilligan, D. O. 1998. 'Farm Size, Productivity and Economic
Efficiency: Accounting for Differences in Efficiency by Size in Honduras'.
Paper presented at the 1998 American Agricultural Economics Association
Annual Meetings, Salt Lake city, Utah.

(9.) Goldschmidt, W. 1978. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social
Consequences of Agribusiness. New York: Allenheld, Osmun.

(10.) Isao, F. 1977. 'The communities of the San Joaquin Valley: The
Relationship between Scale of Farming, water Use and the Quality of Life'.
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Family Farms, Rural Development
and Social Studies, Sacramento, CA, October 28, 1977.

(11.) D'Souza, G. and Ikerd, J. 1996. 'Small Farms and Sustainable
Development: Is Small More Sustainable?' Journal of Agricultural and Applied
Economics 28(1):pp.73-83.

(12.) Langevin. M. S. and Rosset, P. 1999. 'Land Reform from Below:
The Landless workers' Movement in Brazil'. Pp.323-329 in Douglas Boucher
(ed.), The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful world. Oakland: Food
First Books.

(13.) Gryzbowski, Candido, IBASE, personal communication.

(14.) Sobhan, R. 1993. Agrarian Reform and Social Transformation:
Preconditions for Development. London: Zed.

(15.) Lappe, F. M., Collins, J. and Russet, P. with Esparza, L. 1998.
World Hunger: Twelve Myths, 2nd Edition. New York: Grove Press.

(16.) Op. cit. 13.

(17.) Stedile, J. P. 1998. Questao Agraria No Brasil. 6a Edicao, Sao
Paulo: Efitora Atual.

(18.) Op. cit. 11.

(19.) Templeton, S. R. and Scherr, S. J. 1999. 'Effects of
Demographic and Related Microeconomic Change on Land Quality in Hills and
Mountains of Developing Countries', World Development 27(6):903-918.

(20.) Altieri, M. A. 1995. Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable
Agriculture. Boulder: Westview Press.

(21.) Bello, w. with Cunningham, S. and Rau, W. 1999. Dark Victory:
The United States and Global Poverty. Second Edition. Oakland: Food First
Books.

(22.) Op. cit. 15.

(23.) Ibid.

(24.) Heffernan, W. 1999. Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture
System. Report to the National Farmers Union. Columbia: University of
Missouri.

(25.) Permanent Mission of Japan. 1999. Negotiations on Agriculture:
Communication from Japan. Geneva: World Trade Organization, WT/GC/W/220.

(26.) Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture. 1998. 'Non-Trade Concerns in
a Multifunctional Agriculture - Implications for Agricultural Policy and the
Multilateral Trading System. Oslo: Ministry of Agriculture (ODIN-LO),
http://odin.dep.no/ld/norsk/internationalt/multifunctionality/020031-990091/index-hov004-b-n-a.html
.

(27.) European Commission. 1999. 'The EU Approach to the Millennium
Round'. Communication from the Commission to the Council and to the European
Parliament. Brussels: European Commission, http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg01






  • [Livingontheland] Small Is Bountiful, Tradingpost, 05/02/2008

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