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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Wed, 12 Oct 2016 09:21:19 +0000
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This is Mahesh Chander, again.

I agree with Loupa Pius (Message 12) that "small farms cannot only be defined maybe by land size but can also be shared, by livestock keepers who are landless but equally share the natural resources and they equally contribute to world food security". Someone having just 1 ha of land may own a herd of over 200 goats or nomads with a herd of 500 sheep or other species, how are we going to classify them? There can be a basis of livestock units equivalent to decide size of farms based on livestock units owned by a family. A large farmer may own only a few livestock units while a small holder has a big number of livestock units - large farmers (landholders) often keep fewer livestock but small holders routinely keep more livestock comparatively in India at least.

I wish to emphasize also the diversity of food products contributed by small farms unlike large farms which often are specialized and more focused on monocultures than being diversified. The livestock units contribute cowdung/farmyard manure needed for growing crops organically substituting chemical input use in agriculture-environmentally safe foods and less polluting the environment. The large farms tend to be more dependent on chemicals compared to small farms which often supply organic foods with huge diversity. In India, over 650,000 (largest number in any single country) small scale farmers are engaged in organic food production. Thus, when we say contribution of small vs large farms in terms of quality of food produced, the small farmers may be much ahead. Can quality, including nutrition profile of food produced, be criteria to classify small & large farmers?

Mahesh Chander
Head
Div of Extension Education
ICAR- Indian Veterinary Research Institute, 
Izatnagar, 
India
E-mail: mchanderivri (at) gmail.com

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