What Are Smallholder Farmers?
A smallholder farmer is a producer who rears livestock, raises fish or cultivates crops on a limited scale: In the developing world, a smallholder farm is a family-owned enterprise operating on up to 10 hectares, or 24 acres, with most smallholder farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares, or 5 acres, of land.
A smallholder farmer is often characterized as a family farmer since many rely on relatives’ labor to meet production needs, and they typically retain a portion of their harvest for household consumption. Smallholder farmers, sometimes referred to as “small-scale farmers,” include farmers who own the land they work and those who do not.
Small-scale agriculture is often in tension with industrial agriculture, which finds efficiencies by increasing outputs, monoculture, consolidating land under big agricultural operations, and economies of scale. Certain labor-intensive cash crops, such as cocoa production in Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire, rely heavily on smallholders; globally, as of 2008 90% of cocoa is grown by smallholders. These farmers rely on cocoa for up to 60 to 90 percent of their income. Similar trends in supply chains exist in other crops like coffee, palm oil, and bananas. In other markets, small-scale agriculture can increase food system investment in smallholders improving food security. Today some companies try to include smallholdings into their value chain, providing seed, feed, or fertilizer to improve production.
How Many Smallholder Farmers In South Africa?
2.5 million smallholder
There are approximately 2.5 million smallholder farming households in South Africa and 35,000 commercial farming units (Aliber et al., 2013). South Africa’s agri-food system is sophisticated, yet nearly 11% of the population experienced hunger in 2018 (Department of Statistics 2019).
How Big Is A Smallholding Farmers In South Africa?
A small holding is an agricultural holding smaller than a farm. A property is classified as a smallholding from one hectare in size, up to a maximum of twenty hectares.
What Challenges Do Smallholder Farmers Face?
Smallholder farmers face a host of challenges on account of their size and often remote and rural location, which hinder their ability to grow a prosperous business and provide food for their families. Many lack the ability to access credit, formal markets, and high-quality inputs like seeds, farming equipment, or medicine to keep their animals healthy.
Limited economic influence and access to finance on account of their size is a major barrier for the world’s smallholders, said Oscar. “We help small-scale farmers overcome this obstacle by working through co-ops as a vehicle to organize technical assistance and organize access to capital.”
Why Are Smallholder Farmers Important?
Though the land smallholders work and the total quantity they produce may be dwarfed by their larger, industrial counterparts, their impact on the world is anything but minimal: According to recent research, farms smaller than 5 acres produce roughly 35% of the world’s food, and smallholders provide up to 80% of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.