The future of farming: Who will produce our food?

Abstract

Achieving SDG2 (zero hunger) in a situation of rapid global population growth requires a continued focus on food production. Farming not merely needs to sustainably produce nutritious diets, but should also provide livelihoods for farmers, while retaining natural ecosystems and services. Rather than focusing on production principles, this article explores the interrelations between farms and farming systems in the global food system. Evaluating farming systems around the world, we reveal a bewildering diversity. While family farms predominate, these range in size from less than 0.1 ha to more than 10,000 ha, and from hand hoe use to machine-based cultivation, enabling one person to plant more than 500 ha in a day. Yet, farming in different parts of the world is highly interdependent, not least because prices paid for farm produce are largely determined by global markets. Furthermore, the economic viability of farming is a problem, globally. We highlight trends in major regions of the world and explore possible trajectories for the future and ask: Who are the farmers of the future? Changing patterns of land ownership, rental and exchange mean that the concept of ‘what is a farm’ becomes increasingly fluid. Next to declining employment and rural depopulation, we also foresee more environmentally-friendly, less external input dependent, regionalised production systems. This may require the reversal of a global trend towards increasing specialisation to a recoupling of arable and livestock farming, not least for the resilience it provides. It might also require a slow-down or reversal of the widespread trend of scale enlargement in agriculture. Next to this trend of scale enlargement, small farms persist in Asia: consolidation of farms proceeds at a snail’s pace in South-east Asia and 70% of farms in India are ‘ultra-small’ – less than 0.05 ha. Also in Africa, where we find smallholder farms are much smaller than often assumed (< 1 ha), farming households are often food insecure. A raft of pro-poor policies and investments are needed to stimulate small-scale agriculture as part of a broader focus on rural development to address persistent poverty and hunger. Smallholder farms will remain an important source of food and income, and a social safety net in absence of alternative livelihood security. But with limited possibilities for smallholders to ‘step-up’, the agricultural engine of growth appears to be broken. Smallholder agriculture cannot deliver the rate of economic growth currently assumed by many policy initiatives in Africa.

Small farms and development in sub-Saharan Africa: Farming for food, for income or for lack of better options?

“…As described by Giller et al (2021), we see the outcomes of a mixture of pathways of intensification, marginalization and extensification. The locations in the East African highlands have a more favourable agroecology in terms of inherently fertile soils and bimodal rainfall distribution which allows at least two crops a year, yet the Ethiopia and Tanzania locations are among those with the strongest incidence of et al, 2020).…”

“…Yet a large proportion of these households are themselves food insecure (Frelat et al, 2016) and fall below the poverty line (Harris, 2019;Harris & Orr, 2013). Agricultural productivity has increased far more slowly in sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions of the world (Giller et al, 2021), and crops yield only some 20% of what could be achieved (Sanchez, 2002;van Ittersum et al, 2016). A primary reason for the large yield gaps is the poor soil fertility status which results from continuous cropping without replenishment of the nutrients removed in harvested produce (Buresh et al, 1997;Sanchez, 2002).…”

Is it possible to attain the same soil organic matter content in arable agricultural soils as under natural vegetation?

“…In western Europe an important factor has been the decline of mixed farming systems and the tendency for arable and animal-based agriculture to become separated, mainly due to economic pressures. The benefits of reintegrating crop and livestock systems, both in Europe and globally, are discussed in detail by Schut et al (2021) and Giller et al (2021a).…”

Putting diverse farming households’ preferences and needs at the centre of seed system development

“…Some cannot expect to have a decent livelihood on the basis of their farm and need off-farm incomes as a supplement (Giller et al, 2021). The poorest may not be helped by agricultural technology at all as they face existential problems of, for instance, security and health, or their farms are simply too small to generate sufficient returns from farming alone (Alwang et al, 2019;Giller et al, 2021;. The visions, rationales and challenges of these farming households are diverse, generating different sets of aspirations: thus, the applicable underlying theories of change and impact pathways will vary substantially (Mausch et al, 2021a), which needs to be reflected in development approaches, and the development and assessment of technologies, as well as appropriate intervention entry points and project designs.…”

“…Many households may have substantial off-farm income sources, out of choice or need. Some cannot expect to have a decent livelihood on the basis of their farm and need off-farm incomes as a supplement (Giller et al, 2021). The poorest may not be helped by agricultural technology at all as they face existential problems of, for instance, security and health, or their farms are simply too small to generate sufficient returns from farming alone (Alwang et al, 2019;Giller et al, 2021;.…”