Smallholding
[2] Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact.
Today, some companies try to include smallholdings into their value chain, providing seed, feed, or fertilizer to improve production.
An American study showed that small farms with incomes of $100,000 or less spend almost 95 percent of their farm-related expenses within their local communities.
The same study took into comparison the fact that farms with incomes greater than $900,000 spend less than 20 percent of their farm-related expenses in the local economy.
There is lack of detailed, context-specific information on what climate change portends to smallholder farmers in different and widely varying agroecological environments and socio-economic realities, and what management strategies they are employing to deal with these impacts.
[18][19] Especially for smallholders working in commodity crops, climate change introduces an increasing amount of variability to farmer economic viability; for example, coffee production globally is under increased threat, and smallholders in East Africa, such as in the Ugandan, Tanzanian or Kenyan industries, are rapidly losing both viable coffee land and productivity of plants.
[22] Traditional agricultural economic theory considered small farms inefficient, a stance that began to be challenged in the 1950s.
[24] A croft is a traditional Scottish term for a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon.
[29] The agricultural work on smallholder farms predominantly involves family members, with occasional hired labor, particularly during peak seasons.
[29] In addition to farm-related duties, women on smallholder farms often shoulder responsibilities such as collecting fuel and water and engaging in low-value, small-scale trading activities.
[29] Many smallholder farms supplement their income through off-farm work, crucial for sustaining livelihoods, particularly during agricultural downturns like droughts.
These off-farm income-generating activities offer a buffer against agricultural shocks and allow for a diversified livelihood strategy, providing families with increased financial security and access to essential resources.
[32] The distribution of farm sizes depends on a number of agroecological and demographic conditions, as well as on economic and technological factors.
Various types of agribusinesses enterprises work with smallholding farmers in a range of roles including buying crops, providing seed, and acting as financial institutions.
The needs and aspirations of small farmers must feature prominently in policies of market reform that seek to improve food and nutritional security.
[39] Diversification of crops in smallholder farms is one of the potential strategies in sustaining agricultural productivity, and copping with marketing risks.
Smallholder farmers address inequities in land and water distribution by enforcing existing traditional local rules.
Adhering to the water law in order to enforce their permits is less effective, as regional Tanzanian local governments generally attempt to avoid conflict with their populace.
[22] The Act sponsored additional research on small farming operations by US land grant universities and their extension services and mandated that an annual report on these activities be issued by the US Secretary of Agriculture.
[45] This is due mostly to companies using intellectual property law to prevent farmers from having the legal right to fix their equipment (or gain access to the information to allow them to do it).
[46] This has encouraged groups such as Open Source Ecology and Farm Hack to begin to make open-source agricultural machinery.
