- or a need to rethink agriculture? An interesting article by George Monbiot in his post yesterday in the Guardian on peasant farming alludes to the fact once more that small-scale farming is highly productive proven first by Nobel prize laureate Amartya Sen and Robert McC Netting among others.
What they found is that there is not only an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare, ie the smaller they are, the greater the yield. Netting also proved that in doing so, smallholders thereby cause the least environmental damage by using household labour to achieve an energy-efficient, low-input, successful adaptation and yearlong use of their land.
I have been puzzled myself by the high productivity demonstrated by Balinese farmers on their small half-hectare size plots during my field research in 2004-2005. Not only that, they also wisely distribute household labour to the different tasks in the rice field including off-farm work availabilities in their allocation strategies. A paper is currently in the pipeline to be published later this year which will talk about this in detail.
Modern times and the current food crisis however jeopardise the existence of small-scale farming. George writes:
Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production, and by developing plants that either won’t breed true or don’t reproduce at all, big business ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate.
Read all his article.
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