The Role of Smallholder Farms in Food and Nutrition Security PDF Download

Author: Sergio Gomez y Paloma
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030421481
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This open access book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors. Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their production capacities and economic and social resilience could produce positive impacts on food security and nutrition at a number of levels. In addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, the book considers their role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. It investigates the link between agriculture and nutrition in order to better understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase their productivity are essential to improving food and nutrition security, as well as food diversity.

Author: J. Lindsay Falvey
Publisher: Thaksin University Press & IID
ISBN: 974474023X
Category : Farms, Small
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Small farmers tilling handkerchief sized farms feed more than half the world. They thus maintain national stability, forestall conflict and reduce emigration. Secure food supply is nothing short of national security. Such facts define the poor world, yet are misunderstood by nations that influence international development. Practitioners know that small farmers’ yields can exceed those of large farms. They also know that food security means guaranteeing enough food to survive as a national priority unrelated to free trade. Good governments of poor countries practice this to avoid food shortages and anarchy. Food always comes first – that is the message of this powerful book. History is replete with failed societies that lost sight of the centrality of food and farmers. Today, wealthy country delusions of isolation from instability in the rest of the world open everyone to an unprecedented risk. These matters are, in this book, refocused on the essentials of life, global security and peace. Polemic in parts, it shows the situation as it is. The opening paragraph says it. This is a simple book. It argues for the return of two critical values in international development. The first is the securing of food for a minimal level of existence. The second, acknowledgement of the vital role of small farmers. Dilution of these values means that aid may now be increasing risks of starvation and conflict. Some arguments presented here will be counter-intuitive to conventional thinkers, and so information supports forgotten axioms. The book also notes the responsible actions of the world’s major food producers, China and India, both of which are criticized for abandoning unsuitable agendas of development agencies.

Author: Anjanette Raymond
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
The concept of "baby steps" is well known among psychologists and movie buffs alike. In the classic movie "What About Bob," Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Richard Dreyfuss) gives to Bob (Bill Murray), a highly dependent and worried individual, a copy of his book: Baby Steps. Dr. Marvin explains: "It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself. One day at a time, one tiny step at a time -- do-able, accomplishable goals." For many, the concept of "baby steps" and methodically working on simple, constrained pieces of a problem is a useful approach in solving complex and difficult problems. Unfortunately, accomplishing large goals through small increments can take considerable time, and in the case of world hunger, time is a scarce commodity. Prior attempts to address the issue of hunger have been based on baby steps, and the time has now come to abandon such incremental approaches and instead focus on large-scale changes. Otherwise, the world will soon see a food crisis like never before.Since the early 1970s, agriculture has been the focus of development efforts and has been identified as a key to hunger and poverty reduction. By boosting the productivity of smallholder farmers in particular, various goals can presumably be accomplished quickly: greater food security for farm families and their communities (through lower food prices); greater incomes among the poorest of the poor; and the escape from poverty through the commercialization of subsistence agriculture. This paper focuses on large-scale efforts to promote financing for small farmers in low-income countries through the development of useful and efficient legal structures. The first part of the paper, asserts that increased access to financing for smallholder farmers will help boost farm productivity and reduce food scarcity. The second part, describes a new protocol to an existing convention, the Cape Town Convention (defined below) that some argue will benefit agriculture financing. The paper concludes by considering the actual impact the new protocol would have on small farmers' ability to reduce food insecurity and the need for large scale legal reforms to assist small farms secure financing.

Author: Barakat Mahmoud
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1789857333
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This edited volume “Food Security in Africa” is a collection of reviewed and relevant research chapters offering a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the field of food safety and availability, water issues, farming and nutrition. The book comprises single chapters authored by various researchers and edited by an expert active in the public health and food security research area. All chapters are complete in itself but united under a common research study topic. This publication aims at providing a thorough overview of the latest research efforts by international authors on Africa’s food security challenges, quality of water, small-scale farming as well as economic and social challenges that this continent is facing. Hopefully, this volume will open new possible research paths for further novel developments.

Author: Thomas Reuter
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036403424
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Food systems in Indonesia and worldwide have experienced major transformations in the wake of agricultural modernisation. Once intact eco-systems have declined dramatically, along with human diets, long term food security and social cohesion. Using long-term ethnographic research, we documented this loss of traditional food systems in Java, Bali, East Timor and India, but also a recent revival and reinvention of sustainable production methods and community-based distribution systems. A growing movement of small farmers now reject the dominant paradigm of aggressive capitalist development, and are re-creating food systems based on moral ecology – a new concept we introduce to characterise food systems that regenerate the natural environment and serve the common good, rather than maximise profit. Small farmers like these already feed two thirds of humanity using only a third of agricultural land. With proper support, we argue, they could feed the entire world, using sustainable and socially responsible approaches to eradicate world hunger.

Author: Leigh Brownhill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317596579
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Through the integration of gender analysis into resilience thinking, this book shares field-based research insights from a collaborative, integrated project aimed at improving food security in subsistence and smallholder agricultural systems. The scope of the book is both local and multi-scalar. The gendered resilience framework, illustrated here with detailed case studies from semi-arid Kenya, is shown to be suitable for use in analysis in other geographic regions and across disciplines. The book examines the importance of gender equity to the strengthening of socio-ecological resilience. Case studies reflect multidisciplinary perspectives and focus on a range of issues, from microfinance to informal seed systems. The book’s gender perspective also incorporates consideration of age or generational relations and cultural dimensions in order to embrace the complexity of existing socio-economic realities in rural farming communities. The issue of succession of farmland has become a general concern, both to farmers and to researchers focused on building resilient farming systems. Building resilience here is shown to involve strengthening households’ and communities’ overall livelihood capabilities in the face of ongoing climate change, global market volatility and political instability.

Author: Fan, Shenggen
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896295583
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
This food policy report presents a typology of the diverse livelihood strategies and development pathways for smallholder farmers in developing countries, and offers policy recommendations to help potentially profitable smallholders meet emerging risks and challenges. Main Findings Smallholder farmers in developing countries play a key role in meeting the future food demands of a growing and increasingly rich and urbanized population. However, smallholders are not a homogeneous group that should be supported at all costs. Whereas some smallholder farmers have the potential to undertake profitable commercial activities in the agricultural sector, others should be supported in exiting agriculture and seeking nonfarm employment opportunities. For smallholder farmers with profit potential, their ability to be successful is hampered by such challenges as climate change, price shocks, limited financing options, and inadequate access to healthy and nutritious food. By overcoming these challenges, smallholders can move from subsistence to commercially oriented agricultural systems, increase their profits, and operate at an efficient scale—thereby helping to do their part in feeding the world’s hungry.

Author: Sergio Gomez y Paloma
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013277542
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This open access book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors. Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their production capacities and economic and social resilience could produce positive impacts on food security and nutrition at a number of levels. In addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, the book considers their role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. It investigates the link between agriculture and nutrition in order to better understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase their productivity are essential to improving food and nutrition security, as well as food diversity. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author: Sergio Gomez y Paloma
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783030421472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This open access book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors. Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their production capacities and economic and social resilience could produce positive impacts on food security and nutrition at a number of levels. In addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, the book considers their role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. It investigates the link between agriculture and nutrition in order to better understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase their productivity are essential to improving food and nutrition security, as well as food diversity.

Author: Peter B. R. Hazell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191003565
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
The majority of the poor and hungry people in the world live on small farms and struggle to subsist on too little land with low input - low yield technologies. At the same time, many other smallholders are successfully intensifying and succeeding as farm businesses, often in combination with diversification into off-farm sources of income. This book examines the growing divergence between subsistence and business oriented small farms, and discusses how this divergence has been impacted by population growth, trends in farm size distribution, urbanization, off-farm income diversification, and the globalization of agricultural value chains. It finds that policy makers need to differentiate more sharply between different types of small farms than they did in the past, both in terms of their potential contributions towards achieving national economic growth, poverty alleviation, and food security goals, and the types of assistance they need. The book distinguishes between smallholders that are business oriented, subsistence oriented, and at various stages of transition to the non-farm economy, and discusses strategies appropriate for assisting each type. The book draws on a wealth of recent experience at IFAD and elsewhere to help identify best practice approaches.