Smallholder farming to conquer hunger

It is true when conditions are right, famers respond with dramatic improvement in productivity growth. The route out of hunger and poverty starts with the smallholder farmer productivity growth. How will we feed nine billion people by 2050, when there are already 870 million people going hungry in the world today? It is estimated that even if big farmers increase their production by 20 per cent by 2050, smallholder farms will need to more than double their current production in order to feed a growing population, which poses even a bigger challenge for the farmers-but one that can be achieved.
Small farmers are always linked to the local private sector. Smallholder farmers are the backbone of the rural economy - but they are bearing the brunt of climate change. Worldwide, there are 500 million smallholder farms supporting about two billion people. Climate change multiplies the threat facing the smallholders, endangering the natural assets they depend on and accelerating environmental degradation. Over the centuries, smallholders have learned to adjust to environmental change and climate variability.
Small farms play an indispensable role in the global food security, particularly in developing countries. In many instances, in fact, such farms are significantly more productive than large farms. The best evidence of the power of smallholder farmers is the Green Revolution, the period of agricultural productivity in Asia that triggered overall economic growth and contributed significantly to poverty reduction in the region. The increased productivity of smallholder farmers during the Green Revolution not only had a transformative impact on food production and food security, but also changed the lives of youths across the developing world.
If smallholder farmers are to embark on transition to agricultural modernisation, the vicious cycle of poverty, lack of resources and low productivity, which characterise smallholder food crop farming, must be broken. The government must provide several sets of essential public goods. Smallholder farming should be there to encourage smallholders to adopt good agricultural practices. This should be the priority of the agricultural extension services. The government should also strengthen the rural feeder road network and strive to ensure the land rights of farmers.
Despite the enormous success of Green Revolution, countries like India and Bangladesh still have unacceptably high levels of hunger and poverty. They have made progress, but are moving too slowly. This scribe believes we can see a hunger-free South Asia in our lifetime, but it will require us to take urgent action to re-energise the agriculture sector. It will require us to focus on rapidly enhancing farm productivity.
Small farmers are always linked to the local private sector, at the time when they buy input and tools from suppliers and when they sell their produce to traders and sellers. But often these linkages are not strong enough to secure high quality input and necessary technical knowledge, hindering small farmers' efforts to increase their productivity and diversify their agricultural production into higher value one.
Although governments in many Asian countries showed strong political commitment to small-farm-led agricultural development in the past, further support to small farmers will be needed in the areas of policy interventions, support for institutional innovations, public-private partnership and South-South cooperation in order to enable small farmers to face new challenges and benefit from new opportunities.
Governments must play a key role in revitalising smallholder farming and help its farmers graduate from subsistence agriculture to the commercial. Governments also need to ensure that agriculture policies are clearly focused on helping the smallholder farmers begin the process of graduating from subsistence production to commercial farming. However, in many cases the governments should also play an active role in coordinating the delivery of input, financial, technical and output marketing services to small farms.
In summary, smallholders have the ability to reduce hunger in the world and help feed the growing population. However, they need support and access to technologies, markets, information and finance. If companies, governments, donors and NGOs (non-government organisations) come together and work in partnership with smallholder farmers, they can help lift the farmers out of poverty. This will not only support rural economic growth but also contribute significantly to overall food security.
The writer is a nutritionist at the BCA Dept. of Labaid Hospital fahmida@labaidgroup.com