Tipping the Balance: Policies to shape agricultural investments and markets in favour of small-scale farmers

Vorley, Bill; Cotula, Lorenzo; Chan, Man-Kwun

doi:10.21201/2012.2288

Cited by 48 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…Other important threats to the success of 'green revolution' technological advances have been, and remain: increasingly fragmented landholdings that threaten the capacity of landholdings to provide adequate livelihoods (Jayne and Muyanga 2012); lack of investment support to smallholders; and a marginalisation of these farmers from economic and development policy, leaving smallholders more vulnerable (Wiggins 2011;Vorley, Cotula and Chan 2012). (IFAD 2013:9).…”

Section: The Case For Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices

Leavy

Hossain²

2014

IDS Working Papers

109

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Summary Who wants to farm? In an era of land grabs and environmental uncertainty, improving smallholder productivity has become a higher priority on the poverty and food security agenda in development, focusing attention on the next generation of farmers. Yet emerging evidence about the material realities and social norms and desires of young people in developing countries indicates a reasonably widespread withdrawal from work on the land as an emerging norm. While de‐agrarianisation is not new, policymakers are correct to be concerned about a withdrawal from the sector: smallholder productivity growth, and agricultural transformation more broadly, depend in part on the extent to which capable, skilled young people can be retained or attracted to farming, and on policies that support that retention. So who wants to farm, and under what conditions? Where are economic, environmental and social conditions favourable to active recruitment by educated young people into farming? What policy and programmatic conditions are creating attractive opportunities in farming or agro‐food industry livelihoods? This paper explores these conditions in a context of food price volatility, and in particular rising food prices since 2007. To do so, it analyses primary qualitative research on the attitudes of young people and their families to farming in 2012, a time when food prices had been high and volatile for half a decade. In theory, assuming higher prices benefit small farmers, food farming should be more attractive since food prices started to rise in 2007. But this simple causal assumption overlooks both that in many developing countries, it takes considerable economic power – ownership or access to cultivable land and affordable credit for inputs – to turn a profit in farming. It also fails to take into account more sociological explanations governing work and occupational choice – status aspiration and merit on the one hand, and perceived risk on the other. These two explanations help to explain why young people from relatively low income families, particularly those most likely to innovate and raise productivity levels, do not perceive farming as a realistically desirable occupational choice. Based on analysis of interviews, focus group discussion and household case studies with almost 1500 people in 23 rural, urban and peri‐urban communities in low and middle income Asian, African and Latin American countries in 2012, this research digs deeper into some of the established explanations as to why youth in developing countries appear reluctant to enter farming, and identifies conditions under which capable and enterprising youth are being attracted to farming, and entry‐points for youth participation in policymaking around agriculture and food security.

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Section: The Case For Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices

Leavy

Hossain²

2014

IDS Working Papers

109

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“… Further analysis is needed of government policy and regulatory issues affecting scaling of cassava value chains in order to guide engagement with policy-makers. Working as far up the hierarchy of issues as possible would help to draw attention to more systemic problems and address national conditions (Vorley et al, 2012;Wiggins and Keats, 2014).…”

Section: Partnerships and Leverage Have Been Increasingly Recognized mentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical lessons on scaling up smallholder-inclusive and sustainable cassava value chains in Africa

Lamboll

Nelson²,

Posthumus³

et al. 2015

Food Chain

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“…Across the developing world, there are approximately 500 million smallholder farms that represent close to two-thirds of the rural population (IFPRI 2007) and are responsible for a significant portion of the world's agricultural production and economic output (Altieri et al 2012). These farmers typically cultivate small areas, have few resources to maintain or increase productivity, live in environmentally fragile and remote locations, and generally lack access to technical assistance, credit, or government support (Vorley et al 2012). Smallholder farmers are disproportionately affected by climate change, as they depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture and are therefore highly vulnerable to any changes in precipitation patterns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping adaptive capacity and smallholder agriculture: applying expert knowledge at the landscape scale

et al. 2016

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The impacts of climate change exacerbate the myriad challenges faced by smallholder farmers in the Tropics. In many of these same regions, there is a lack of current, consistent, and spatially-explicit data, which severely limits the ability to locate smallholder communities, map their adaptive capacity, and target adaptation measures to these communities. To explore the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in three data-poor countries in Central America, we leveraged expert input through in-depth mapping interviews to locate agricultural landscapes, identify smallholder farming systems within them, and characterize different components of farmer adaptive capacity. We also used this input to generate an index of adaptive capacity that allows for comparison across countries and farming systems. Here, we present an overview of the expert method used, followed by an examination of our results, including the intercountry variation in expert knowledge and the characterization of adaptive capacity for both subsistence Climatic Change (2017) The Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22202, USA and smallholder coffee farmers. While this approach does not replace the need to collect regular and consistent data on farming systems (e.g. agricultural census), our study demonstrates a rapid assessment approach for using expert input to fill key data gaps, enable trans-boundary comparisons, and to facilitate the identification of the most vulnerable smallholder communities for adaptation planning in data-poor environments that are typical of tropical regions. One potential benefit from incorporating this approach is that it facilitates the systematic consideration of fieldbased and regional experience into assessments of adaptive capacity, contributing to the relevance and utility of adaptation plans.

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Tipping the Balance: Policies to shape agricultural investments and markets in favour of small-scale farmers

Abstract: Policies to shape agricultural investments and markets in favour of small-scale farmers Rasmalar and her family are part of a rice growing co-operative in Sri Lanka (2011).

Cited by 48 publications

References 10 publications

Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices

Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices

Practical lessons on scaling up smallholder-inclusive and sustainable cassava value chains in Africa

Mapping adaptive capacity and smallholder agriculture: applying expert knowledge at the landscape scale

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