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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 08:28:42 +0000
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I am Richard W. N Yeboah, PhD, Senior Lecturer, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Northern Ghana. I represent the Ghana team on the SALSA project (http://www.salsa.uevora.pt/en/). 
 
I have followed the discussion and can see the dimensions that are being introduced to the definition of small farm. I think that in an attempt to answer question 3.1.1, it is important to first define a "farm" as many people will have different definitions of it.

The farm could be considered as a piece of land on which a crop is cultivated, or a parcel of land divided into plots of several crops. It could also be considered as a combination of crops and animals. It could also be considered as an animal farm where either a single animal or more than one animal are kept. Then we can consider the estate type of farm where the farm goes beyond just crop production and animal rearing but includes improvements. We also have the concept of a compound and bush farm where a farmer has up to 1 or 2 ha around the house but has more than 2 ha in a distant place far from the community.

The farm could also be in an urban or peri-urban area where land is scarce but high valued crops are cultivated and hence bring in more money. There are irrigation farmers on small plots of land less than 0.1 ha. on the developed irrigated sites but produce quite a lot in the dry season and make more money than those with large farms.  
 
Using size alone as the base for the definition will be deficient because in areas where we have high population density their small will be very small as compared with areas with low density. We need to include in the definition the type of crop. By the operations and demand, some crops demand larger land sizes than others to be considered large. 

Again in using size we cannot use land owned but rather land cultivated since in Africa, for example, and some people have also mentioned this in the e-mail conference, many farmers do not own land - "landless farmers". I also think that "smallholder" is not "small farm" neither is "peasant farmer" nor "subsistence farmer".

Also Message 23 (by Daniel Nkomboni) says 6 ha is a small farm but in Ghana it is a medium farm. 

These then make me think that we need to define the term based on regions or blocks: developing countries as against developed, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Africa, etc. So we need to find some similarities to give groupings.
 
Message 24 (by Loupa Pius) mentioned the shift from crop production to animals due to climate change. This is a new concept gaining recognition and in Northern Ghana it is being discussed to help farmers in the arid regions who have regular crop failures.

Richard W. Nartey Yeboah
Department of Agribusiness Management and Finance 
Faculty of Agribusiness and Communication Sciences
University for Development Studies
Tamale, 
Ghana
+233-27789282
E-mail: ryeboah(at)uds.edu.gh; narteyrwn(at)hotmail.com

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