The contribution of small farms to global food production is determined by economic conditions rather than biological, ecological or agronomic limitations.
I agree that it's hard to determine the number, and the reality is more nuanced than chain/web. On the other hand, I think the downplaying of local/peasant production is being used in a propaganda battle along the lines of 'small farms can't feed the world', 'billions will starve' and it's important not to play into that.
Chris, I think the paper has a lot of valid criticism of the the Ricciardi and Lowder papers. I don't think it deals much with my concerns of the ETC calculations. I believe that the ETC figures and the Ricciardi Lowder figures are misused to prove points they don't prove. Having said that I think my main take is that: 1) as there are so much uncertainty in data and difficulties in categories it is not possible to come up with a "correct figure". 2. As long as small farms are not discriminated agains and people are extremely poor, they can be as or more productive than big farms and 3) the current share of food originating in small farms is no indication of the potential that could come from small farms and thus 4) there is no reason at al to conclude that small farms would make the feeding of 8 billion people impossible. There are many other interesting and sometimes difficult (such as land access, process of ruralization, (re)distribution of assets and power) implications of a small farm future, which I certainly don't have to explain to you.
Hi Gunnar, you make a lot of good points here. I wonder what you make of ETC's restatement & the paper by Knezevic?
https://etcgroup.org/content/backgrounder-small-scale-farmers-and-peasants-still-feed-world https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i19p14479-d1253628.html
I agree that it's hard to determine the number, and the reality is more nuanced than chain/web. On the other hand, I think the downplaying of local/peasant production is being used in a propaganda battle along the lines of 'small farms can't feed the world', 'billions will starve' and it's important not to play into that.
Chris, I think the paper has a lot of valid criticism of the the Ricciardi and Lowder papers. I don't think it deals much with my concerns of the ETC calculations. I believe that the ETC figures and the Ricciardi Lowder figures are misused to prove points they don't prove. Having said that I think my main take is that: 1) as there are so much uncertainty in data and difficulties in categories it is not possible to come up with a "correct figure". 2. As long as small farms are not discriminated agains and people are extremely poor, they can be as or more productive than big farms and 3) the current share of food originating in small farms is no indication of the potential that could come from small farms and thus 4) there is no reason at al to conclude that small farms would make the feeding of 8 billion people impossible. There are many other interesting and sometimes difficult (such as land access, process of ruralization, (re)distribution of assets and power) implications of a small farm future, which I certainly don't have to explain to you.