Biodiversity
Climate Change
Natural Disasters
Deforestation
Desertification
Genetically Modified Organisms
Sustainable Agriculture
Industrial Pollution
Dumping of Toxic Substances
Bush Fires
Waste Management and Disposal
• RESPONDING TO REAL AND PRESENT DANGERS •
• FACILITATING SELF-MOBILISATION •
CHALLENGING DOGMA AND PROPAGANDA
• EFFECTIVE NETWORK •
AMBUSHING AN IMMINENT CONJUNCTION
• THE ENDURING IMPERATIVES •
OF THE PAN-AFRICANIST STRUGGLE
• CONSOLIDATION OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY •
In the Context of Global Trade Negotiations
Summary
In this Policy Brief I challenge the conventional wisdom that small farms are backward and unproductive. Using evidence from Southern and Northern countries I demonstrate that small farms are "multi-functional" —more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than large farms. Small farmers can also make better stewards of natural resources, conserving biodiversity and safe-guarding the future sustainability of agricultural production.
The on-going process of trade liberalization —now being taken a step further in the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations for the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) —has already had dramatically negative effects on small farmers everywhere. The AoA has the potential to severely undercut the remaining viability of small farm production, with potentially devastating consequences for rural economies and environments worldwide. I conclude with a call to recognize the true multi-functional role and value of small farmers, and to unite in opposition to an AoA that might make their continued existence impossible.
Introduction
For more than a century mainstream economists in both capitalist and socialist countries have confidently and enthusiastically predicted the demise of the small, family farm. Small farms have time and again been labeled as backward, unproductive and inefficient —an obstacle to be overcome in the process of economic development. The American model of large scale, mechanized, corporate agriculture is held out as the best, if not the only way to efficiently feed the world's population. Small farmers —or "peasants" —have been expected to go the way of the dinosaurs, and rightly so, according to conventional wisdom.
In this Policy Brief I challenge the conventional wisdom about small farms and assert that they are "multi-functional" — more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than large farms. I argue that small farmers make better stewards of natural resources, conserving biodiversity and better safe-guarding the sustainability of production. The evidence I present evidence comes from both the Third World and from industrialized countries like the United States.
Today's on-going process of liberalization in international agricultural trade — now being taken a step further in the Millennium Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations —is widely recognized to have dramatically negative effects on small farmers in both Northern and Southern countries. This puts the small farm issue — called The Agrarian Question by renowned social scientist Karl Kautsky at the beginning of this century—squarely on the agenda for debate at the end of the millennium.
If small farms are worth preserving —if indeed a small farm model of rural development makes more sense than does the large-scale, mechanized, chemical intensive, corporate dominated and socially excluding model toward which business-as-usual is carrying us—then now is the time to act.
The first point worth noting is that while small farmers have been driven out of rural America by the millions, and we have seen a similar, though lessor rural-urban migration in the Third World, the fact is that family farmers do still persist in the U.S. and continue to be numerically dominant. In the Third World they are central to the production of staple foods. The prediction of their demise continues to be premature, though their numbers have dropped substantially and they face new threats to their livelihoods on an unprecedented scale.
The second point is that small farms are far from being as unproductive or inefficient as so many would have us believe. Peasants have stubbornly clung to the land despite more than a century of harsh policies which have undercut their economic viability.
The third point is that small farms have multiple functions which benefit both society and the biosphere, and which contribute far more than just a particular commodity—though there is ample evidence that a small farm model for agricultural development could produce far more food than a large farm pattern ever could. These multiple and beneficial functions should be seriously valued and considered before we blithely accept yet another round of anti-small farm policy measures—this time at the level of the global economy. It is toward the second and third points—the benefits of small farms, that I direct the bulk of this paper.
In the conclusion to this Policy Brief I outline the grave threat to small farms presented by the WTO negotiations for an Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Several countries, led by the United States, seek to push further free trade in agricultural products. I show how this could lead to the destruction of small farms and severely damage rural environments worldwide.
I close by issuing a call to rally around the concept of the multiple functionality of small farms, for both human societies and for the biosphere. By recognizing the important role played by small farms we have an opportunity to stop and even reverse trade policies which erode the viability of small farms. More...
This Policy Brief was prepared for "Cultivating Our Futures," the FAO/Netherlands Conference on the Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land, 12-17 September 1999, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
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Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy
Oakland, CA USA
Co-published by:
Transnational Institute
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The Netherlands
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