Small Farmers Are Frequently Innovative Business People

The theme of World Food Day 2011 was the effect that volatile food prices have on the poorest people but also on the worlds small farmers.

Greenpeace, the charity, estimates that 40% of the world's population are small farmers, the majority of them farming fewer than five acres and between them producing most of the world's food.

While there has been an emphasis on the efficiency of scale and on large "agribusiness" there is also an argument that it is incorrect to see small farms as inefficient and that small farmers are business people who are keen to innovate and experiment to better themselves.

One example of their willingness to experiment is a project being carried out in East Africa, to plant what are called fertiliser tree systems that can help fix nutrients in the soil, helping farmers who do not have enough land to allow some of it to lie fallow to replenish the nutrients in the soil.

Researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre, who have been studying such schemes, have found that if the right plants are used and planted in between crops the yield can more than double.

Greenpeace also argues that the traditional and local knowledge of smallholder farmers will be pivotal in addressing the major challenges of climate change, maintaining biodiversity and developing the low-input agricultural systems required to overcome fossil fuel and pesticide dependency.

Price volatility affects small farmers as well as low-income consumers, however. Because of the length of the growing season small farmers need to have a degree of certainty about the price they will eventually get for their produce.

They also need access to all the tools and methods available to help them to protect their land and their crops. They cannot afford loss of goodness from their land. Nor can they afford to lose a part of their crop to predators, pests and diseases.

They may also be open to using some of the newer low-chem agricultural products coming from the laboratories of the biopesticides developers. Using biopesticides, yield enhancers and biofungicides all derived from natural substances can also have a powerful effect on their ability to farm sustainably and to reduce wastage in the crops they grow.

However, these products require a significant investment in development and getting them tested and registered. Local systems need to be developed for the farmers not only to train them in their use once they do come onto the market but also to make them affordable to the small-scale farming enterprises that would most benefit from them.

Copyright (c) 2011 Alison Withers

by: Alison Withers

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