Agriculture is noted to be among the major polluters in the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that agriculture emissions increased from “4.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2001 to over 5.3 billion tonnes in 2011, a 14 percent increase (FAO, 2014).” As the world envisages an increase in food production to feed its anticipated growth in population, questions have been asked regarding the sustainability of farming practices and their intrinsic impacts on humanity, biodiversity, and the ecosystem at large. It is in this contest that agriculturists, policy makers, and scientists have sought to promote a discourse on the environmental friendliness of different farms types. One of such farm types is smallholder farms.
Smallholder farms constitute about 80% of the 570 million farms around the world with nearly 80% of them covering less than 2 hectares (Vermeulen and Wollenberg, 2017). Smallholder farms are estimated to provide 70% and 80% of total food in the world and developing countries respectively (FAO 2013: IFA 2013). With the growing concerns about climate change and the need to promote sustainable agriculture while securing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, questions have been asked about the practices of smallholder farms and how environmental friendly they are. Is smallholder farming the way to go? What do we know? To answer these question, smallholder farms will be compared to large farms on 3 variables; (1) biodiversity and soil quality (2) water use and energy use (3) green house gas emissions.
Data on biodiversity and soil quality of smallholder farms are country specific and not aggregated on regional scale. For example, in Canada, the bigger the farms the less woodlands and wetlands there are. There are twice more bird species and habitats in small Swedish farms. In Latin America, small farms often have a denser agroecological matrix (Belfrage K. et al. 2006). Available literature looks at different variables or items from different countries which make it difficult to make value judgements or comparative analysis of small and large farms. That said, activities of smallholder and large farm have different effects on soil quality. Large farms depend on synthetic chemical fertilizers to support high-intensity monocrop systems, polluting the soil whereas smallholders practice tilling and plowing of farmlands (Tilman, 1998).
Like biodiversity and soil quality, data on energy and water-use are location-specific and not aggregated globally. The available data however feeds into the economic theory of economies of scale. It is an economic term that explains how the cost of an additional output decreases as the volume of the output increases. Large farms benefit from the economies of scale. Large farms invest more in energy and water use efficiency technologies. The cost of investing in a unit of power or water is reduced because of the size of the farm and their operational efficient. Smallholders on the other hand, pay the real per unit cost of water and energy because they buy in small quantities and not necessarily because of inefficiencies. Large farms are thus better in the use of energy and water.
Vermeulen and Wollenberg (2017) posit that smallholder and large holder contribute about 32% and 68% of global GHG emissions from agriculture and 70% and 30% (FAO 2013) of world’s food. However, in developing countries, smallholder farms are estimated to account for 42% of GHGs and 80% of food whereas 58% GHGs and 20% of food are attributed to large holder farms (Vermeulen and Wollenberg 2017: IFA 2013). Smallholder farms, from the summary data, is relatively efficient in developing countries. With lesser GHGs, smallholder farms provide more food. Data on GHGs of smallholders in developed countries is relatively scanty.
From the above discussion, smallholder farms cannot be said to have the answers to all the questions on environmental friendliness. From the mix bag of data, it is obvious that environmental friendliness is a multivariate concept. Depending on what one focuses on, large and small farms can be the most environmentally friendly. On average small farms are better for biodiversity, large farms are better at energy and water management and small farms emit less of GHGs. Farm size is just, but a proxy for the variables that really matter.
References
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Chappell, M. Jahi, et al. (2013). Food sovereignty: an alternative paradigm for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in Latin America. F1000 Research 2.
Fahrig, Lenore, et al. (2015). Farmlands with smaller crop fields have higher within-field biodiversity. Agriculture, Ecosystem & Environment 200: 219-234
FAO. 2008a. The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2008 – Biofuels: prospects, risks, and opportunities. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
FAO (2018). Agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions on the rise. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/216137/icode/
Graeub, B.E. et al (2016). The state of family farms in the world. Words Development, 87, 1-15.
International Fund for Agriculture (2013). Smallholders, food security, and the environment.
Jara Rojas et al (2012). Adoption of water conservation practices. A socioeconomic analysis of small-scale farmers in Central Chile. Agriculture Sysytems, 119, 54-62.
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Sonja Vermeulen and Eva Wollenberg (2017). A rough estimate of the proportion of global emissions from agriculture due to smallholders. Research program on Climate Change, agriculture, and food security.
Statistics Canada (2011). Census of Agriculture.
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