Smallholders and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Smallholders are a large and diverse group of farmers found throughout the world who depend on small plots of land for their survival. The term is widely used but not easy to define because arbitrary size categories do not fit varying environments and cultures. Generally, smallholder agriculture is associated with farming in the developing world. Family or household units commonly carry it out on land that is owned or worked, and it is often characterized by a high proportion of subsistence production.

In the developing world, smallholders constitute the most common agricultural production unit. As such, they are critical for food production not only because of the way they support large rural populations, but also because their surplus production finds its way to markets both locally and globally. Smallholders can be found on land that they own themselves, on communally held land that is allocated to them, or on land rented from landlords. Smallholders may be a relic of past peasant and communal systems, now existing as tenants or right holders, or they may be the consequence of recent forms of rural transformation, such as government resettlement schemes or clearing of forest by new settlers. Smallholders can span an enormous range of livelihoods, from some of the most severe forms of rural poverty, to quite prosperous small farms. They are found throughout the developing world, from the paddy fields of southeast Asia, to maize plots in central Africa, or to the new settlers in the Amazon Basin. There are even some similarities with smallholders in the developed world, those living on family farms.

Smallholder agriculture is characterized by intensive systems of farming with high inputs of household labor, though rarely of capital, and concentrated use of land. Because of the concern for household food production, diversity of agriculture is common, with a range of crops, trees, and some livestock usually in evidence. These household food crops may provide a small surplus for sale, though some smallholders may engage in specialist cash cropping perhaps at the expense of their own food needs. Some smallholding systems are more directly involved in commercial crop production, sometimes (as with sugar cane in Fiji) when linked to larger company or cooperative operations that may contract them to specialize in certain products and sometimes (as with coffee in Kenya) when selling on open commodity markets. In these circumstances, smallholders are successful and play a useful role because they bear the risks of market price fluctuations and because of their low costs of labor.

Despite predictions that smallholder systems will eventually disappear to be replaced by larger commercial farms and rural wage labor, smallholder agriculture has proved to be remarkably flexible and durable. The use of unpaid family labor and the concern for subsistence production means that smallholders can often withstand market and other shocks at times when purely commercial operations fail. It is common for smallholder households to be engaged in part in nonfarm activities, such as wage labor or petty trading, and this provides both supplementary cash income and a buffer against fluctuating returns from agriculture. In addition, smallholder systems are useful in absorbing population growth. With the centrality of family and kin in their organization, smallholders can usually provide some form of livelihood for increasing numbers of people by intensifying labor inputs and land use beyond the limits of what would be considered profitable.

There is a controversial relationship between smallholders and environmental degradation. On one hand smallholders are blamed for much environmental damage. Driven by poverty and desperation, smallholders are seen to contribute to problems such as soil erosion and declining soil fertility by cropping or grazing land too heavily, or to deforestation by clearing bush for pasture and gardens or setting fire to forests. On the other hand, smallholders in some parts of the world have carried out remarkably sustainable forms of agriculture for centuries, modifying the environment in many cases to provide water or protect soil fertility, but not greatly damaging associated landscapes or ecosystems. Unfortunately it is easy for governments to blame relatively powerless smallholders for environmental degradation when deeper causes and other agencies are at work. Smallholders may not form the most effective foundation for strategies seeking rapid agricultural development and modernization, but they are a successful and necessary basis for providing a basic livelihood for many millions of rural inhabitants.

Bibliography:

Frank Ellis, Peasant Economics: Farm Households and Agrarian Development (Cambridge University Press, 1988);
M. Netting, Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture (Stanford University Press, 1993);
Ian Scoones, Stephen Devereux, and Lawrence Haddad, “Introduction: New Directions for African Agriculture” IDS Bulletin of Development Studies (v.36/2, 2005);
Richard L. Tinsley, Developing Smallholder Agriculture: A Global Approach (AgBe Publishing 2004).