The majority of the poor and hungry people in the world live on small farms and struggle to subsist on too little land with low input - low yield technologies. At the same time, many other smallholders are successfully intensifying and succeeding as farm businesses, often in combination with diversification into off-farm sources of income. This book examines the growing divergence between subsistence and business oriented small farms, and discusses how this divergence has been impacted by population growth, trends in farm size distribution, urbanization, off-farm income diversification, and the globalization of agricultural value chains. It finds that policy makers need to differentiate more sharply between different types of small farms than they did in the past, both in terms of their potential contributions towards achieving national economic growth, poverty alleviation, and food security goals, and the types of assistance they need. The book distinguishes between smallholders that are business oriented, subsistence oriented, and at various stages of transition to the non-farm economy, and discusses strategies appropriate for assisting each type. The book draws on a wealth of recent experience at IFAD and elsewhere to help identify best practice approaches.
Kanayo F. Nwanze: Foreword 1: Peter Hazell and Atiqur Rahman: Introduction PART I: The State of Smallholder Agriculture in the Developing World 2: Gordon Conway: On Being a Smallholder 3: Geoffrey Livingston, Steven Schonberger and Sara Delaney: Right Place, Right Time: The State of Smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa 4: Ganesh Thapa and Raghav Gaiha: Smallholder Farming in Asia and the Pacific: Challenges and Opportunities 5: Julio A. Berdegué and Ricardo Fuentealba: The State of Smallholders in Agriculture in Latin America PART II: The Business Agenda for Smallholders 6: Maximo Torero: Targeting Investments to Link Farmers to Markets: A Framework for Capturing the Heterogeneity of Smallholder Farmers 7: Sukhpal Singh: Promoting Small Farmer Market Access in Asia: Issues, Experiences, and Mechanisms 8: Atiqur Rahman and Jennifer Smolak: Financing Smallholder Farmers in Developing Countries 9: Akinwumi A. Adesina, Augustine Langyintuo, Nixon Bugo, Kehinde Makinde, George Bigirwa, and John Wakiumu: Improving Farmers' Access to Agricultural Inputs and Finance: Approaches and Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa 10: Martin Evans: Corporate Agribusiness Development and Small Farms 11: John Lynam and Stephen Twomlow: A Twenty-First Century Balancing Act: Smallholder Farm Technology and Cost-Effective Research 12: Calestous Juma and David Spielman: Farmers as Entrepreneurs: Sources of Agricultural Innovation in Africa PART III: Enhanced Livelihood Opportunities for Smallholders 13: Edward Heinemann: The Changing Rural World and Livelihood Options for Resource-Poor Rural People 14: Klaus Deininger: Securing Land Rights for Smallholder Farmers 15: Mahabub Hossain and W. M. H. Jaim: Empowering Women to Become Farmer Entrepreneurs: Case Study of an NGO Supported Programme in Bangladesh 16: Camilla Toulmin: Securing a Future for Smallholder Farmers in an Era of Climate Change 17: Steve Wiggins: Rural Non-Farm Economy: Current Understandings, Policy Options, and Future Possibilities 18: Peter Hazell and Atiqur Rahman: Conclusion: The Policy Agenda
Peter Hazell trained as an agriculturalist in the UK before completing his PhD in agricultural economics at Cornell University. He had a long career as a research economist at the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), including serving as director of the environment and production technology division and the development strategy and governance division. He has been Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His extensive and widely cited publications include works on new methods of using mathematical programming to solve farm and agricultural sector planning problems; the impact of technological change on growth and poverty reduction; the appropriate role of agricultural insurance in developing countries; and agriculture's growth linkages to the rural non-farm economy. He has worked throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. Atiqur Rahman has held various managerial, research, and teaching positions at IFAD and previously worked at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. He was a visiting Professor at the University of California, Riverside and an Adjunct Professor at John Cabot University, Rome. He was the lead co-coordinator and researcher of the IFAD 2001 Rural Poverty Report. He has published widely.
Reviews for New Directions for Smallholder Agriculture
This book contributes to the continuous debate whether small family farms can contribute to food self-sufficiency and be a driving force for economic development, or whether they are inefficient and an impediment to development...It is commended to academics and practitioners who are interested in aqgricultural and rural development, rural poverty issues, food policy and trade policies. * Axel Wolz, Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture *
