Smallholder farmers hold the key to global food security

“In most regions of the world, farming systems are under intense pressure. But the problems are not the same everywhere,” said Mario Herrero, ILRI senior scientist and the paper’s lead author.

“In the past, farmers have developed the ability to adapt to small changes, in terms of weather patterns and access to fertile land and water. But the rapid rates of change seen in many developing countries today outstrip the capacity of many to adapt.”

Smallholder mixed farmers, particularly in Africa and Asia, have been overlooked by donors and policymakers because they typically cultivate small plots of land, where they grow modest amounts of staple crops such as rice and maize while also rearing a few cows, goats or chickens.

Yet collectively these farmers are feeding most of the world’s one billion poor people and they are the key to any efforts to intensify production in the developing world, according to the paper.

The analysis reports that small farms that combine crop and livestock production supply much of food staples of developing countries—41 per cent of maize, 86 per cent of rice and 74 per cent of millet—and most of the meat and dairy products consumed in these regions as well.

These so-called “mixed systems” can be models of efficient farming, with livestock providing the draft power to till the land and leftover crop residues serving as feed for animals.

Moreover, the eggs, milk and meat from livestock routinely serve as important sources of regular household income, of high-quality protein, as well as a buffer against failed harvests.

Herrero and his colleagues believe that this mixed, or integrated, approach to farming offers many opportunities to increase food production sustainably in the developing world “where over the next few decades, agricultural systems, already facing a variety of stresses, will be expected to accommodate a massive population surge.”

But the authors caution that realising the potential of the crop-livestock approach will require reorienting agricultural policies to support smallholder farmers facing an array of challenges that over the next 20 years will challenge farmers’ ability to stay abreast of population growth.

These challenges include climate change, which will alter growing conditions among other factors; an explosion in demand for livestock products, particularly in Asia; and competition for finite natural resources, including water, arable land, and fossil fuels needed to produce fuel and fertiliser.

But perhaps most alarming is the fact that in many regions, the various pressures are creating a situation in which the most aggressively farmed lands in the high-potential regions are “tapped out” or close to their capacity for production.

The scientists warn that “the pressures currently acting on the intensively farmed lands of developing countries are large enough to slow and possibly end the substantial growth rates of crops seen in recent decades.”

For example, competition for water resources looms as a “huge constraint” on rice and wheat production in South Asia, particularly in India.

In the breadbaskets of Africa, exhausted soils and the loss of agricultural lands to urbanisation threaten yields.

Meanwhile, over the next two decades, meeting rising demand for meat and dairy products in South Asia will require an additional 150 to 200 million cattle and 40 per cent more pigs and poultry.