Recalibrating Data on Farm Productivity: Why We Need Small Farms for Food Security

Abstract

In 2009, the ETC Group estimated that some 70% of the food that people globally consume originates in the ‘peasant food web’. This figure has been both embraced and critiqued, and more recent critiques have focussed on analysing farm productivity to offer some more precise estimates. Several analyses suggest that the proportion of small farms’ contributions to total food production is closer to one-third, arguing that the role of small food producers in food security are grossly exaggerated. We challenge this argument by re-tabulating the available farm productivity data to demonstrate that smaller farms continue to provide a significant proportion of food and are consistently more productive than their larger counterparts. We further posit that even our own interpretation falls short of estimating the full extent of small farms’ contributions, including non-monetary ones, like ecosystem services and community life, many of which run counter to the productivist model that drives large-scale industrial agriculture. We conclude that policies that support small farms are a global necessity for food security, as well as for transitions to more sustainable and more equitable food systems.

1. Introduction

Recent global crises have brought food security into sharp focus across all government levels, and experts are signalling that we have already entered the next food crisis [1,2,3,4,5]. While food security depends on more than just the availability of food, production remains one of its central pillars.

Food systems literature has long leveraged criticism of industrialized food, which emphasizes large-scale specialized production [6,7,8,9]. Decades of economic policies devoid of serious social and environmental considerations have promoted ‘competitive advantage’—the productivist model that, when applied to food systems, encourages countries and regions to specialize their commodity production. The model purportedly allows countries to grow their economy with exports of a small number of crops, and, in turn, benefit from importing foods produced elsewhere at a lower cost. This model, however, has been largely theoretical, and in practice has resulted in increased global inequalities [10], a dependence on imported food in many parts of the world [11], and the commodification of food globally [12]. Additionally, the model entails heavy use of machinery, monocultures, and chemical farm inputs, all of which have detrimental effects on biodiversity and ecosystems [13,14]. All of these characteristics make industrial food more vulnerable to shocks and interruptions [9].

Critics of the global industrial food system offer a plethora of alternative approaches that distribute the risks and benefits of food systems more fairly and meaningfully address social and environmental dimensions in addition to economic wellbeing [15,16,17,18]. Many of the alternatives call for specific practices, such as agroecology, that cannot easily (if at all) be implemented in large-scale production [14]. Researchers and international bodies alike encourage diversity in food production—diversity in crops, practices, and, particularly, scale [9,19]—a feat which cannot be accomplished by industrial production given its reliance on specialization. Diversity is identified as a key pillar of food system resilience, with the other three pillars being agency, buffering, and connectivity [20,21]. A diverse system, when compared with a large uniform system, has more distributed vulnerabilities, which makes the systems better able to absorb disruptions and recover from shocks [22]. The inability of large-scale production to feasibly incorporate diverse and sustainable approaches suggests that we need to consider alternatives more seriously.

The purpose of this paper is to critically interrogate a recent debate about the relationships between a farm’s size and its productivity. Industrial farming discourse promotes the perception that there is a positive relationship—the larger the farm, the greater the productivity. Our objective is to demonstrate that based on the data at the centre of this debate, on average, small farms actually produce more food on less land, which makes small farms essential to building resilient food systems for the future.

Whereas the social and environmental benefits of small-scale production over industrialized production are well-established, debates around the viability of small-scale operations continue, and often centre on productivity. Advocates of industrialized food typically argue that small-scale production is not efficient enough to ensure a sufficient food supply (e.g., [23]), and this narrative is amply bankrolled by agri-business (e.g., [24], see also [25,26]). Critical research has thus attempted to demonstrate otherwise, teasing out the productivity numbers for various sized farms. Over the past decade, many organizations have relied on the ETC Group’s 2009 estimate [27]—cited, among others, by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization—that smallholders produce some 70% of all food consumed by humans.

Given the growing reliance on this estimate, a recent commentary by Ritchie [28] is notable for how it challenges that 70% figure based on the vagueness of its source. Ritchie questions the origin of this number and makes an informed guess that it probably reflects the proportion of food produced by family farms. Despite the idyllic imaginary of family farms, Ritchie correctly notes that many family farms, especially those in industrialized countries, are not small. To correct this perceived misestimate, Ritchie cites the 2018 paper by Ricciardi and colleagues, published in the journal Global Food Security [29]. The paper, which we ourselves have cited before, seems to be the most detailed published analysis available. Ritchie also draws on the work by Lowder and colleagues, published in 2021 in World Development [30], which draws similar conclusions to Ricciardi et al. These two analyses indeed contradict the 70% figure, placing it closer to 30%. Based on this, Richie uses a sensationalist title, “Smallholders produce one-third of the world’s food, less than half of what many headlines claim”, and highlights labour productivity as a key issue for smallholders.

When the 2009 ETC Group’s report titled Who Will Feed Us? first suggested that peasants feed most of the world, the figure received little traction outside of the circles of scholars and activists who were already identifying multiple detrimental effects of industrialized farming. Over the years, however, the report was cited more often and the 70% figure started to appear in more publications. More attention garnered more critique, and several authors have attempted to ‘debunk’ this figure, including the Ricciardi et al. and Lowder et al. studies. In 2022, the ETC Group published a response [31] specifically addressing both of those studies, as well as the Richie commentary which mobilizes them. Richie’s commentary was published on the influential Our World in Data site, based at the University of Oxford and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, while two of the three authors on the Lowder study are affiliated with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In other words, these publications can potentially influence global food policy and, as such, require careful scrutiny.

In the following pages, we delve into the existing data on the relationship between farm size and productivity, arguing that Richie’s commentary, in its effort to critique the ETC Group’s estimate, both minimizes the significance of small farm productivity and fails to acknowledge the multifaceted social and environmental benefits of farming practices typically associated with small farms.

1.1. Defining Farm Size

The push for farm growth coming from industrial and agri-business actors has further complicated the already complex task of defining farm size with identifiers like small and large, family and industrial, subsistence and commercial. Productivist approaches to food production, and the agri-food policies spurred by them, have encouraged farm enlargement as an efficiency strategy. Put simply, the approach assumes that the larger the farm, the more revenue it will generate and, thus, the more productive it will be. The revenue proposition shores up the argument for large farms and is supported by data on farm labour productivity (amount of labour required for food produced), on which Ritchie leans heavily. This proposition, however, ignores two crucial facts. First, higher labour productivity does not easily translate into people being fed. In countries with high farm labour productivity, like Canada, for instance, a great deal of farming is dedicated to commodity production intended for exports, but the proportion of the population experiencing food insecurity steadily remains between ten and fifteen percent (see [32]), and as much as half of the food produced in the country goes to waste [33]. Second, large farms continue to rely on human labour, but that labour is markedly different from the labour of smallholders—it is typically exploitative, poorly paid, repetitive, back-breaking, and devoid of the autonomy that independent farmers with access to productive land have [34,35,36]. Globally, those who have no access to productive land may also turn to manufacturing and resource extraction employment, which is rife with labour abuses, high health and safety risks, and a lack of control over their workday [37,38]. Small farms, on the other hand, can be means of livelihood and autonomy for many who would otherwise be susceptible to exploitative labour practices. This is particularly significant in regions where the possibilities of finding non-farm employment are slim, and where making farming a source of livelihood for a greater number of households can be a way to address poverty [39].

In contrast, farm enlargement policies, combined with deeply entrenched property laws, have concentrated farm ownership across the globe. In countries like Canada, this has resulted in farms that take up thousands of hectares and are sometimes owned by corporations and investment firms [40] (see also [41,42], minimizing autonomy and livelihood at the community level). These farms rely on labour markets, including significant numbers of temporary foreign workers, to operate [43]. In Canada, programs like the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program are suggested by many [44,45,46] to offer competitive advantages in the globalized industrial food system in the form of flexible, cheap labour that would otherwise not be possible with a domestic workforce. Characterized by Preibisch [46] as a ‘pick-your-own-labor’, migrant labour programs often allow for excessive employer freedom across working hours, shift schedules, wages, hiring, termination, and labour conditions. Such arrangements are attractive, in fact, integral, to the productivity levels of larger farms, but consistently come at the expense of worker wellbeing. In other words, large farms still depend on human labour, but that labour is less autonomous, and the distribution of farm income is marked by growing inequities. Moreover, the cost of farmland is increasingly prohibitive to new farmers, with far-ranging implications for social equity and the environment [47].

Development programs, agricultural research, and government policies concerned with food security recognize that the realities of large and small farms can be vastly different. Various organizations, agencies, and international bodies distinguish different types of farms, but there is no universal definition of a small or large farm. Some distinguish between subsistence (peasant) farming and commercial production, but this distinction needs to be understood in context—small commercial farms are not about big profit, but livelihood. Others differentiate between family farms and corporate farms—a differentiation greatly critiqued by the Global South, given the size of some family farms in the industrialized world. Yet others stick strictly to farm area size, but the categories vary—small farms have been defined as those under 2 hectares all the way up to 100 hectares. Some of these categories indeed make more sense than others in some contexts, but none have been universally adopted for global assessments. Regardless of context, farm sizes, however they are distinguished, have come to symbolically stand in for the tension between industrialized and non-industrialized agriculture. We will return to considerations around defining farm size, and the importance of these considerations to the data, as we begin to analyze the relationship between farm size and productivity.

1.2. Parallel Food Systems

The differences between industrialized and non-industrialized farming go beyond scale; they come with markedly different knowledge systems. As a broad commonality woven across communities’ more specific practices, traditional and Indigenous food systems are often characterized by an overarching understanding of circular flows of farm inputs and outputs, which recognizes that planetary resources are finite and need to be used and replenished wisely. Examples include three sisters polyculture practices and more recently spotlighted agroforestry practices in Haudenosaunee traditions [48,49,50], which are suggested to promote soil health, resource efficiency, and nutrition, as well as overall biodiversity and sustainability within food and ecosystems. In contrast, industrialized farming is based on productivist, linear thinking, in which humans extract, use, consume, and dispose of resources in a terminal manner [13]. The ongoing climate, war, and public health crises have revealed the failures of industrial food [51,52,53]. Despite the industry’s promises of feeding the world, billions remain malnourished and food insecure, while agriculture is responsible for about a third of climate-changing gas emissions, all the while continuing to add to the destruction of soil, water, and biodiversity, and the erosion of livelihoods for the most disadvantaged [54,55,56,57,58,59]. Not surprisingly, international organizations have in recent years started to recognize the shortcomings of this linear thinking.

Many current targets call on traditional knowledge as a reliable path to sustainability. The world’s most significant peasant organization, La Via Campesina, has prioritized food sovereignty as a key global goal. Food sovereignty—the ability of communities to have control over their food systems and align those systems with their own values, knowledge, and traditional practices—can be a useful political concept for sustainability efforts, though it can mean different things to different communities, depending on context [60]. Concurrently, a growing number of farmers, activists, and scholars are turning to integrated approaches which combine traditional and scientific knowledge (e.g., [61]) to address productivity, climate change, and the health and social implications of food systems.

Neoclassical economics, from which the productivist approach originates, view economies of scale and competitive advantage as preconditions of efficient markets. As farm size and farm revenue can generally be objectively measured, the productivist view has often used just those two data points to measure farm productivity. This approach is reductionist in that it ignores non-revenue outputs. The resulting industrial system of farming has been criticized for its inability to alleviate food insecurity and its significant negative impact on human and environmental health, all the while creating new inequalities among the producers themselves. Additionally, the armed conflicts and public health crises of the past few years have further revealed the vulnerabilities of the global industrial food supply.

Meanwhile, scholars, activists, and international bodies have called for more attention to non-industrialized, and specifically small-scale, farming. They argue that small farms continue to play a critical role in subsistence, local economies, community cohesion, and environmental remediation. As the criticisms of industrial farming grow, small farms have come to symbolically represent the various forms of resistance to industrial farming.

Many food systems scholars, and we include ourselves here, see this resistance as not necessarily threatening big, corporate, expert-oriented, and biotech-heavy farming, but as complementary to it. The resistance allows for the development of a food system parallel to the industrial one—one that relies on farming that is diversified, territorial/regional, and works with, instead of against, nature. It is not a call for an immediate end to industrial practices. Rather, it is a recognition that the industrial system is neither adequate nor sustainable, and that a safety net of well-developed alternative practices is crucial to nourishing humanity and bolstering food system resilience.

1.3. Measuring Farm Productivity

Farm productivity is a significant issue to consider, as the argument in favour of industrialized food relies on the idea that traditional farming alone cannot feed the world. Farm output in terms of food produced may seem a simple measure, but it provides a rare common ground for debate on farming practices. Looking at the volume of food a farm produces moves away from looking at revenue alone, and at the same time isolates food production from other values such farms can produce (e.g., ecosystem services), offering an opportunity for analysis that is relevant across approaches. While some debate remains around productivity being measured in volume, energy, or nutrition, the majority of the available literature uses energy (as measured in kilocalories) as the key measure of productivity.

The ETC Group’s 2022 response to critiques [31] clarifies their methodology in detail. Most notably, they explain that their notion of the ‘peasant food web’ incorporates more than agriculture alone, and pays attention to food sources like subsistence fishing, hunting, and foraging, as well as home and urban gardens. They estimate that these other food sources account for 20 of the 70% of food consumed by humans, while the other 50% comes from small farms. They also focus solely on food for human consumption, and set aside agricultural production for animal feed and non-food uses (such as fibre and biofuel production). Finally, they take into account estimates of how much food is produced but wasted along the supply chain.

We agree with the ETC Group that these considerations are important, and that farm productivity alone paints an incomplete picture of just how people procure food. Nevertheless, delving into the farm productivity numbers can offer important comparisons between small and large farms, which in much of the current literature are justifiably used as proxies for industrialized and non-industrialized farms. We turn to those numbers next.

2. Materials and Methods

As the debate continues about the extent to which smaller or larger farms can address food security, biodiversity loss, livelihood, equity, the right to food, and the climate crisis, it is important to sort out what is happening on the ground. Given the complexity of these interrelated challenges and solutions, it is useful to be clear about key considerations. First, it is well-established that smaller farms have higher yields when assessed by both weight and value per hectare, although this is disputed by Lowder et al., who work with the assumption that yields per area of land are not impacted by farm size [30]. Smaller farms also have higher crop and non-crop biodiversity [62]. We also know that, across operations small and large, farmers already produce enough food to feed more than 10 billion people a healthy diet [63,64]. This is contrary to the widely promoted idea by supporters of the agri-industrial complex that we need to produce more food. However, who produces which food on what land is murky. To help sort out which farmers we should throw our support behind with both research and programming, it is important to understand the data we have and to interpret them so that they reflect, as much as possible, what is happening across various size farms in both the Global North and Global South. One key consideration for this analysis is that farm size is relative to its place in the world, so there tend to be more large farms in the Global North, with more small farms in the Global South [29,30]. The size of what constitutes a family farm is also linked to place. This is especially true for what constitutes a ‘medium’ sized farm, as the data are grouped into categories. This is key when we are considering how to interpret the available data. Defining our terms of reference is also important, so when we refer to smallholders, family farmers, small-scale farmers, peasants, or large farmers, what do we mean?

Work to tease out answers to these complex questions began with the seminal analysis by the ETC group in 2009 discussed earlier in this paper. Based on their analysis, it was determined that “small farmers and other peasant producers are currently the main source of nutrition for approximately 70% of the world’s population” [27]. Building out from this work, the focus of Ricciardi et al.’s 2021 paper is on smallholder farmers, who they define as producing food on less than 2 hectares. The Lowder et al. [30] analysis looks at smallholders and family farmers using World Census on Agriculture (FAO) data from 1960 to 2012. In this analysis, the data are limited, as 33 countries only have data ranging from 1960 to 1990, while there are no data for 46 countries. Further, the authors acknowledge the difficulty in establishing analytical categories. That said, they define small farms as having less than 2 hectares (12% of farms), while family farms are defined as being family operated regardless of size (75% of farms), so that family operated farms also include small farms. Lowder et al.’s definition of a family farm is consistent with the FAO-IFAD 2019 definition used as the International Decade of Family Farming was launched:

Family Farming (including all family-based agricultural activities) is a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production that is managed and operated by a family, and is predominantly reliant on the family labour of both women and men. The family and the farm are linked, co-evolve and combine economic, environmental, social and cultural functions [65].

Even in regions where some farm sizes reach tens of thousands of hectares, the number of people who depend on smaller, family-run farms remains significant. In Canada, where the average farm size is just over 800 acres (~330 hectares), a quarter of all farms are smaller than 70 acres (28 hectares), and more than half are under 100 hectares [66].

The next section attempts to tease out what we can say about the data we have at our disposal and where existing analysis and data, if retabulated, can help answer some of the questions around farm size, farm productivity, and what these considerations mean for how farms, in particular small farms, can best support food security into the future. We focus on the data at the centre of this recent debate—rather than offering a metanalysis, we demonstrate how the data in question can be interpreted differently when reorganized.

3. Results and Discussion

These results represent a reinterpretation of the data presented in the Ritchie commentary, and reproduced here in

Table 1. All data reported as they appear in the Ritchie (2021) [28] commentary.

	% Agricultural Land, (ha)	Crop Production, Kilocal	Food Supply, in Kilocal
Up to 1 ha	12	12	15
Up to 2 ha	24	29	32
Up to 5 ha	32	41	46
Up to 10 ha	40	51	55
Up to 20 ha	49	54	59
Up to 50 ha	57	59	63
Up to 100 ha	65	65	69
Up to 200 ha	72	81	85
Up to 500 ha	80	85	87
Up to 1000 ha	88	95	97
All sizes	100	100	100

. By grouping the data, as seen in

Table 2. Data organized to reflect considerations of family farm sizes in both the Global North and the Global South. Data summary.

	% Agricultural Land, (ha)	Crop Production, Kilocal	Food Supply, Kilocal
Small farms (up to 10 ha)	40	51	55
Medium farms (10 ha up to 200 ha)	32	30	26
Large farms (more than 200 ha)	28	15	13

, based on considerations of smallholder farmers in the Global South and family farmers in the Global North (small farms = up to 10 ha and medium sized farms = 10 ha to 200 ha), the data indicate that family farmers and smallholders account for 81% of production and food supply in kilocalories on 72% of the land. Large farms, defined as more than 200 hectares, account for only 15 and 13% of crop production and food supply by kilocalories, respectively, yet use 28% of the land.

Our analysis problematizes the conclusions made by Ritchie. Our re-evaluation centres on a regrouping of the data presented in the Ricciardi paper. We concur that about 30% of global crop production and global food supply is provided by land holdings of less than <2 hectares and that this accounts for about 25% of agricultural land. Using Ricciardi et al.’s data, we suggest that the next categories be regrouped to provide an alternative perspective on the contribution small-scale farms make to the food system. Based on our groupings, farms up to 10 hectares provide more than 55% of the world’s kilocalories on about 40% of the land. While farms up to 10 hectares are beyond subsistence farming, they could not be considered large farms under any classification system. At the other end of the dataset, farms over 1000 hectares occupy 12% of the land used for food production and yet only provide 3% of the food supply in kilocalories. Put simply, small farms are, on average, significantly more productive than large ones, and play a much more important role in feeding the global human population.

Interpreting the data in this way allows us to understand more about the contribution of small-scale farms to kilocalories in the context of how much total land they occupy. It also allows us to situate large-scale agriculture and its relative contribution—as it yields less per hectare, and because so much of the large-scale production is for biofuels and animal feed and not for direct human consumption.

This reinterpretation of the data allows us to reflect on farming livelihoods, the implications for different farming systems, and the need for public investment in and policies supportive of small-scale production. It also underscores the opportunities that open with moves away from a productivist model. We join the increasingly loud call for recognition that small-scale farmer poverty is a social and political problem resulting from continued global inequities and the primacy of the market economy and private property rights in relation to land ownership. These challenges need to be tackled head on. The data analysis we provide helps to make a compelling case for moving in this direction.

Of course, what these numbers do not reveal is the fact that practices that are more commonly associated with smaller farms also help protect our future ability to produce food and are critical to food system resilience. They tend to support livelihoods and community economies (e.g., see [67]), provide ecosystem services [68], offer a greater variety of food [62], and are better suited for the preservation of traditional knowledge than industrial farms that rely on machinery and chemical inputs. These are valuable and intentional ‘externalities’ that add to their productivity. If we think about productivity in these broader terms, then small farms do even more, as they operate in social and ecological contexts. Here, the ETC Group (2022) [31] is worth quoting at length.

The peasant food web describes an alternative food system model that exists alongside (and pre-dates) the idea of the industrial food value chain. It is a territorial food system composed of community relations between smallholder producers, usually family or women-led, including farmers, livestock-keepers, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, hunters, gatherers, fishers and urban and peri-urban producers. Those in these webs of relation may or may not grow all of their own food, trade with neighbours and sell the surplus in local markets. This web largely operates outside of global financial markets, may be unrecognised by formal trade surveys and often employs more agroecological production methods that are environmentally beneficial (or at least less harmful than the [industrial food value] chain’s) [31].

This definition helps to contribute a broader, more inclusive understanding of food systems and builds on the Civil Society and Indigenous People’s Mechanism of the FAO Committee on World Food Security constituent groups. We focused here on the efficiency, rather than the proportion of food provided by small scale farmers, to argue that this efficiency, taken in the context of other small farm contributions (such as increased nutritional value, ecosystem services, and agri-biodiversity, as well as biocultural diversity, soil health, and water quality) is the system we need to feed the world. Even if they did indeed produce ‘only’ a third of the world’s food, it would be simply illogical to turn away from a more efficient approach simply because it is underrepresented.

The ETC Group’s approach also reflects the food systems lens increasingly used to understand food production in context. Much of the agricultural record-keeping fails to consider small farms’ contributions to local economies (through local purchases of supplies and services, also known as the ‘multiplier effect’ (see [69])), or any other externalities. The food systems approach accounts for these externalities as added value, and from that standpoint, the total productivity of small farms appears even greater. Moreover, the ETC Group’s approach prods us to consider the role of the informal economy, which is not included in official farm statistics. In Canada, for instance, “An agricultural operation is defined as a farm or agricultural holding that produces agricultural products and reports revenues or expenses for tax purposes to the Canada Revenue Agency” [70], so any small farm that produces food for family or community consumption and produces no monetary revenue is not accounted for.

Meanwhile, “Informal markets play a critical role in providing affordable, accessible and diverse food for the urban poor, while at the same time supporting the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers, traders and vendors” [71]. Given that informal food systems “are often the main or only source of nutrient-rich foods for those on low incomes, and are also a significant source of livelihoods, including for women and youth who may have few other viable options for income generation”, they also play a critical role in sustainable diets [72]. In contrast, industrial farming is less efficient, less resilient, produces fewer (if any) positive externalities and significantly more negative externalities, and continues to rely on poorly paid labour, including migrant farm labourers, for their productivity.

4. Conclusions

When assessing farm productivity globally, only estimates are possible. Multiple factors prevent precise measure; the ways in which land ownership policy environments vary in different geographical and political contexts, the differences in average farm sizes in different regions, the varied prevalence of ownership models and formal participation in markets, and the inconsistent manner in which data are collected and categorized all complicate the estimations. Even with sound data on formal farm production, we can only estimate so much when referring to the proportion of food that feeds people, as opposed to food that is put to other uses (animal feed, fibre, and biofuels) and food that goes to waste. Additionally, in line with the ETC Group’s work, we recognize that not all food consumed by people, which includes food from foraging, hunting, and subsistence fishing, is accounted for in agricultural statistics.

Nevertheless, the existing estimates clearly indicate that, on average, small farms are more productive than large ones. Consideration of the informal food economy (which is almost exclusively small-scale) also suggests that the significance of small-scale production is particularly high for those in greatest need of nutritious food, and that small producers’ importance to resilient food systems is in fact grossly underestimated by most. Robust food systems that feed everyone must include a robust small farm sector or risk vulnerabilities with potentially serious food security implications. This necessity is compounded by the vast differences in how small farms tend to operate compared with their larger counterparts. Large farms are significantly detrimental to social and labour equity, ecosystems, the preservation of traditional knowledge, and the social fabric of communities. Large farms negatively leverage these dimensions to maintain productivity. Unlike these operations, small farms are embedded within supportive local communities and are well-placed to adapt and transform in the face of shocks and interruptions without exploitative strategies.

These findings need to be reflected in policy and programs that support a robust small farm sector. Policies that support place-based solutions and encourage transitions to more sustainable and more equitable food systems are a pressing need.

A recent European Union brief points to conclusions similar to ours, and has the potential to inform a range of policies in Europe, as it recognizes that “small farms (in this case, those with up to 2 ha of farmland) are the greatest contributors to global food production in relative terms, suggesting that they have greater cropping intensity or higher yields than larger farms” [73]. This brief also notes that small farms contribute to biodiversity and rural life and economies, suggesting that European policies that support farm income and other financial instruments for small farms are key to boosting diversity in all its forms—farm sizes, operations, crops, non-crop biodiversity, etc.—and more fairly distributing overall food market revenue.

In the early years of this century, Brazil established itself as a model of food systems thinking through policy, with a range of programs supporting both food production and food access. Their official food-based dietary guidelines, released in 2014, consider the entirety of food eating as a personal, social, and health act, and they quickly became a celebrated policy example for other jurisdictions. The food systems policy development that took place in Brazil in the 2000s and early 2010s also encompassed policy related to sustainable rural development, where the Brazilian government focused specifically on small family farmers, in part because it paid attention to the knowledge that already existed both among the farmers and among civil society organizations [74], resulting in significant improvements to food nutrition security in the country. While the successes of these programs were distributed unevenly, and in the long term proved to be very vulnerable to changing political will [74], they nevertheless demonstrate what is possible when governments are open to listening to producers, eaters, and civil society groups. A more recent evaluation of direct public procurement from family farms in Brazil notes that “family farm food purchase policy can positively affect the quality of food offered in public institutions, the local economy, and the environment”, but that “strengthening and consolidating the government’s food procurement policy requires more significant government investment in productive infrastructure for family farming” [75].

The UN Committee on World Food Security similarly notes the critical role that small farmers play in sustainable food systems, and, in particular, highlights agroecology as an important approach to farming that is incompatible with industrial agriculture. The Committee is certainly not anti-industry, and in fact it explicitly states that “all food systems have the potential to contribute further to sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition by following context-appropriate transition pathways towards the transformation of food systems” [54], but it recognizes that “agroecological approaches, which have shown promising results, tend to be under-researched worldwide and investment has been severely limited when compared to other innovative approaches” [54]. The resulting policy recommendations that the Committee offers are highly supportive of family farms and particularly small-scale producers, noting that smallholders are both the most vulnerable to climate change events and play a critical role in supplying food to those living in extreme poverty.

The ability of small farms to adapt agroecological practices, work to overcome the challenges of climate change, and help feed those whose food and nutrition security are the most compromised all make for excellent reasons to support small farmers around the globe. Governments and funding agencies at all levels of governance can also rest assured that these farms are in fact more productive than industrial enterprises. Developing robust suites of policies and support programs for small farmers is now both urgent and necessary if we are to avoid further food and nutrition security crises and better align food production with global sustainability goals and targets.