•We estimate the number, size, and distribution of farms, and farmland worldwide.•Most of the world’s more than 570 million farms are small and family-run.•Small farms (less than 2ha) operate about ...12% of the world’s agricultural land.•Family farms operate about 75% of the world’s agricultural land.•Continued efforts are needed to enhance agricultural census data.
Numerous sources provide evidence of trends and patterns in average farm size and farmland distribution worldwide, but they often lack documentation, are in some cases out of date, and do not provide comprehensive global and comparative regional estimates. This article uses agricultural census data (provided at the country level in Web Appendix) to show that there are more than 570 million farms worldwide, most of which are small and family-operated. It shows that small farms (less than 2ha) operate about 12% and family farms about 75% of the world’s agricultural land. It shows that average farm size decreased in most low- and lower-middle-income countries for which data are available from 1960 to 2000, whereas average farm sizes increased from 1960 to 2000 in some upper-middle-income countries and in nearly all high-income countries for which we have information.
Such estimates help inform agricultural development strategies, although the estimates are limited by the data available. Continued efforts to enhance the collection and dissemination of up-to date, comprehensive, and more standardized agricultural census data, including at the farm and national level, are essential to having a more representative picture of the number of farms, small farms, and family farms as well as changes in farm size and farmland distribution worldwide.
•There are more than 608 million farms in the world.•Family farms produce roughly 80% of the world’s food in value terms.•Farms smaller than 2 hectares produce roughly 35% of the world’s food.•The ...largest one percent of farms operating 70 percent of the its farmland.•Agricultural censuses must cover non-household farms.
Numerous attempts have been made to estimate the share of the world’s food produced by family farms and by farms of different sizes. This paper updates estimates of the number of farms worldwide, their distribution and that of farmland, using the most recent agricultural censuses available, in combination with survey data where needed. It finds there are more than 608 million farms in the world, more than 90% of which are family farms (by our definition), and they occupy around 70–80% of farmland and produce roughly 80% of the world’s food in value terms. The paper also underscores the importance of not referring to family farms and small farms (i.e., those of less than two hectares) interchangeably: small farms account for 84% of all farms worldwide, as per the available census information, but operate only around 12% of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35% of the world’s food (well below the 80% produced by family farms). A comprehensive examination of changes in farmland distribution over time is also provided to showcase the increased concentration of farmland among large farms as economies grow. The largest 1% of farms in the world (those larger than 50 ha) operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. These estimates are not free from bias given existing data gaps. The paper underscores the need to ensure that agricultural censuses cover non-household farms in order to enhance our understanding of agriculture and food production worldwide.
Every farm a factory Fitzgerald, Deborah Kay
2003, 20030208, 2013-09-02, 20030101
eBook, Book
During the early decades of the twentieth century, agricultural practice in America was transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial activity. In this book Deborah Fitzgerald argues that farms ...became modernized in the 1920s because they adopted not only new machinery but also the financial, cultural, and ideological apparatus of industrialism.Fitzgerald examines how bankers and emerging professionals in engineering and economics pushed for systematic, businesslike farming. She discusses how factory practices served as a template for the creation across the country of industrial or corporate farms. She looks at how farming was affected by this revolution and concludes by following several agricultural enthusiasts to the Soviet Union, where the lessons of industrial farming were studied.
•In Indonesia, oil palm expansion is largely driven by smallholder farmers.•We analyze effects of adoption on farm household living standards in Sumatra.•Oil palm adoption increases consumption ...expenditures and improves nutrition.•Part of the total effects is attributable to oil palm adopters expanding their farm size.•Using quantile regressions, we find significant impact heterogeneity.
Oil palm is one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. In Indonesia, the expansion is largely driven by smallholder farmers. While recent research has studied effects for the environment and climate change, socioeconomic impacts in the small farm sector have hardly been analyzed. Here, we address this research gap by analyzing effects of oil palm adoption on farm household living standards and nutrition in Sumatra. Using survey data and econometric models, we estimate average impacts, impact pathways, and impact heterogeneity. Results show that oil palm adoption improves household living standards and nutrition. Mean impacts on food and non-food expenditures, as well as on calorie consumption and dietary quality, are all positive and significant. A sizeable part of the total effects is attributable to oil palm adopters expanding their farm size rather than realizing higher profits per hectare. Oil palm has lower labor requirements than alternative crops (especially rubber), so that adopting farmers are able to manage larger land areas. Labor saved through switching from rubber to oil palm is also used to increase off-farm incomes. Impact heterogeneity is analyzed with quantile regressions. We find positive effects of oil palm adoption across the entire expenditure distribution. However, the absolute gains in total expenditures and non-food expenditures are larger for the better-off, suggesting that oil palm may contribute to rising inequality.
Commercial agriculture in the United States is comprised of several hundred thousand farms, and these farms continue to become larger and fewer. The size of commercial farms is sometimes ...best-measured by sales, in other cases by acreage, and in still other cases by quantity produced of specific commodities, but for many commodities, size has doubled and doubled again in a generation. This article summarizes the economics of commercial agriculture in the United States, focusing on growth in farm size and other changes in size distribution in recent decades. I also consider the relationships between farm size distributions and farm productivity growth and farm subsidy policy.
The right to farm is essential to everyone's survival. Since the late 1970s, states across the nation have adopted so-called right-to-farm laws to limit nuisance suits loosely related to agriculture. ...But since their adoption, there has yet to be a comprehensive analysis of what these laws do and who they benefit. This book offers the first national analysis and guide to these laws. It reveals that they generally benefit the largest operators, like processing plants, while traditional farmers benefit the least. Disfavored most of all are those seeking to defend their homes and environment against multinational corporations that use right-to-farm laws to strip neighboring owners of their property rights. Through what the book calls the "midburden," right-to-farm laws dispossess the many in favor of the few, paving the path to rural poverty. Empty Fields, Empty Promises summarizes every state's right-to-farm laws to help readers track and navigate their local and regional legal landscape. The book concludes by offering paths forward for a more distributed and democratic agrifood system that achieves agricultural, rural, and environmental justice.
•Compares group farms that pool resources and individual small family farms, in terms of productivity and profitability.•Comparison is based on detailed data from author’s primary surveys in two ...states of India: Telangana and Kerala.•Kerala’s groups notably outperform individual farms in annual output/ha and net returns/farm; Telangana gets mixed results.•Factors such as novel institutional design, state support, group heterogeneity, commercial crops, underlie Kerala’s success.•Lessons learnt are relevant for replication elsewhere in South Asia and beyond, with context-specific design adaptation.
Is there an alternative model to small family farming that could provide sustainable livelihoods to millions of resource-constrained and often non-viable smallholders in developing countries? Could group farming constitute such an alternative, wherein smallholders voluntarily pool land, labour and capital to create larger farms that they manage collectively? In South Asia, for instance, over 85% of farmers are small and increasingly female. Potentially, group farming could provide them economies of scale, a dependable labour force, more investible funds and skills, and greater bargaining power with governments and markets. But can this potential be realised in practice? In particular, can group farms economically outperform small family farms? A rare opportunity to test this is provided by two experiments begun in the 2000s in the Indian states of Kerala and Telangana. Constituted only of women, the groups lease in land to farm collectively, sharing labour, the cost of inputs, and the returns. But the states differ in several respects, including the technical support the groups receive, and their institutional base, composition, land access and cropping patterns. Based on the author's primary sample surveys in both states, this paper compares the productivity and profitability of group farms with that of small individual family farms in the same state. Kerala’s groups perform strikingly better than the predominantly male-managed individual farms, both in their annual value of output per hectare and annual net returns per farm, while in Telangana group farms perform much worse than individual farms in annual output, but are equivalent in net returns. In both states, groups do much better in commercial crops than in traditional foodgrains, where the largely male-managed individual farms, owning good quality land and with longer farm management experience, have an advantage. The factors underlying the differential performances of Kerala and Telangana, and the lessons learnt for possible replication, are also discussed. Overall, the paper demonstrates that group farming can provide an effective alternative, subject to specified conditions and adaptation of the model to the local context.
With the 1996 Farm Act, the United States introduced payments that were designed to be "decoupled." Labor allocation choices are likely to be affected by receipt of payments, and income from off-farm ...jobs has been the major source of income for most farm households for sometime. This article examines whether the 1996 change has affected the off-farm labor participation of farm households. We conclude that the observed increase in off-farm participation of farm operators who received payments was not the result of the 1996 policy change. Government payments, whether coupled or decoupled, have a negative effect on off-farm labor participation.
Ensuring the sustainability of small farms relies on understanding farm economics, a crucial yet often overlooked aspect. In North Carolina, many small farms are confronted with financial challenges ...and the risk of collapse. This study examines the factors that influence farm profitability while considering the intersectionality of race and gender. The findings reveal significant disparities in farm and operator characteristics. Specifically, first‐generation and retiree farmers exhibit a lower likelihood of profitability. Conversely, factors positively associated with profitability include owning larger farm acreage, engaging in commercial agricultural production, utilizing paid family labor, practicing full‐time farming, and being a non‐White minority farmer. To foster the sustainability of small farms, it is imperative to implement policies that support full‐time farming and incentivize the use of paid family labor. These measures can contribute to bolstering profitability and safeguarding the economic viability of small farms.
As a multi‐objective policy, the EU Common Agricultural Policy continues to secure significant income support for farmers as one of the nine specific objectives. We estimate the income transfer ...efficiency of a broad set of pivotal policy measures, focusing on the effects of farm structure on income transfer efficiency. We use dynamic modelling, based on a micro‐data panel of Italian farms for the period 2008–2014, allowing for endogeneity, simultaneity bias, and omitted variables. In line with previous studies and economic expectations, we find that decoupled direct payments provide the highest contribution to agricultural incomes, followed by agri‐environmental payments and on‐farm investment subsidies. Coupled payments have no significant impacts on farmers’ income. Generally, for all analysed Common Agricultural Policy measures, large farms benefit from greater transfer efficiency levels compared with medium and small farms. These differences among instruments and across farms suggest that policy‐participation costs may play a pivotal role, together with the economic structure of farms, in determining the income transfer efficiency of CAP policies.
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