Hi all,
Here is the aggregated input received last night and today on Topic #4: "How small farms address future challenges”
Best, Peter---
Q4.1/7 - Question: "4.1. Within your region, what are the three main challenges that small farms face in the future? Why? Are these different from past challenges? If so, why?”
1/ From: Sandra Š?mane <[log in to unmask]> (Latvia)
Sandra Š?mane is a sociologist from Baltic Studies Centre, a Salsa partner.
On the base of small farmers’ and experts’ opinions expressed in SALSA research, small farmers’ market access will continue to represent a major future challenge for Latvian farmers, but in a slightly modified context. Latvia experiences quite a strong depopulation, rural areas are becoming even more sparsely populated, which means small farmers have increasing difficulties to find a sufficient number of local consumers – their principal clients so far. Proliferation of bigger retailers and other food businesses have been squeezing out of the market smaller food businesses who have provided market access to numerous small farmers. Consumer food purchasing practices which during last decades have been increasingly favouring supermarkets have not helped small farmers either. The principal question is how to (re)establish contact with local consumers and how to access consumers in farer markets in the cities.
Cooperation among farmers, as mentioned among several conference participants, might be a solution. From previous studies of cooperation in Latvia, we find that a professional non-farmer manager is one of the key factors; the question of farmers’ soft skills remains open.
But there are also other solutions which involve active participation of other stakeholders. There are other stakeholders who have power to improve small producers’ market access. National food production and distribution regulations and taxation regulations can be better adopted to small farmers’ situations (f.i., differentiated personal income tax), and support measures can be developed that better target small farms’ needs (like, small-scale investment programs in agricultural production).
Local municipalities can provide valuable support to organise small producers’ market initiatives (good examples from Latvia include supporting establishing local farmer markets, subsidizing a cooperative’s manager, providing facilities for a cooperative’s shop, developing municipal food strategies that favour local producers).
Next to various governments, consumers can take an active role in supporting local producers. This is already happening through various consumer driven food initiatives involving small farmers. However, these groups might need some organised advice, learning platforms to avoid learning by doing each time and to disseminate their experiences more effectively.
Hand in hand with growing consumers’ interest in local food, there is an increasing number of food businesses launching themselves in this field. Producer organizations, associations and existing cooperatives are still much dominated by bigger farmers, and there is a margin in their policies and practices to better involve small farmers. Agricultural training can better address marketing knowledge and skills, and agricultural advisory could integrate knowledge needs of various stakeholders and serve as knowledge broker between them. So, we argue that there are needed joint efforts, not only from small farmers, to improve and profit from their improved market access.
Small farmers will continue to tackle this challenge of market access individually (by maintaining personal market channels linking them with their individual customers) and also by using available collective platforms, like municipal farmer markets, online platforms for local food marketing and selling.
2/ From: Ren?rs St?rmanis <[log in to unmask]> (Latvia)
My name is Renars Sturmanis. I am Project Manager in Latvian Rural Advisory and Training Centre - leading organization of consultancy services related to rural development in Latvia.
Small farms face many challenges. The challenge in Latvia (and probably elsewhere) is population decline, especially in rural areas. Which, on the one hand, raises the problem of finding staff (especially during harvesting), but on the other hand, the number of potential buyers for production is also decreasing. Moreover, for the remaining buyers small farms have to compete with local large farms and import production (not related to the cereals sector, where the products are largely traded on the world market thanks to the cooperation).
Another challenge - access to finance for small farms. For various reasons, small farms are not among the priorities of commercial banks. Other potential funders (venture capital, business angels) also give priority to projects with high profit margins (mainly in the IT area). The lack of funding from private financiers shrinks the opportunity to grow. Therefore, the only way to develop is national support and European structural funds.
The challenge is also knowledges how to operate efficiently and maximize the benefits from available resources. Although, it seems that to grow tomatoes or potatoes is easy, there are, however, a lot of things that can improve both the cultivating technology itself, as well as product sales, etc. Therefore, the importance of knowledges is high. In this context, I would like to hear other opinions and experiences on how to develop small farms, the role of business incubators / accelerators in the development of small farms? Importance of peer to peer learning?
3/ From: Raja Rathinam <[log in to unmask]> (India)
Most of us know that the small farms are having more challenges. We have to work out strategy for helping the small farms as per the local needs with the support of FAO and the UN.
For example, in India, helping the small farmers are much easy in certain part of the country like Gujarat, Karnataka etc. But it is difficult in certain other States Like Uttar Pradesh. Therefore UNDP has come forward to initiate the support to some extend.
However the issue of helping the small farmers are still challenging in Uttar Pradesh because of the local problems, poor infrastructure and less cooperation among the farmers. Still we have developed a system so that the local production can be used locally through technological, managerial and innovative approach. This lead to help in productivity improvement and income generation of small farmers as compare to other regions within the specified area. This is the achievements which we have got for the past few years.
Now it is to be expanded and continued with the help of professional like you so that the combined efforts will benefit the farmers as Dr.Kurien, the Father of White Revolution has done in this country.
4/ From: Gary Vaughan-Smith <[log in to unmask]> (UK-Tanzania)
SilverStreet Capital invests into the African agricultural sector and its primary goal is to help develop agricultural value chains which support small-holder farmers. We operate in Southern and Eastern Africa my comments below particularly apply to our Tanzanian project where we work with 9,000 grains farmers, ~two-thirds of whom are women and, over 20,000 poultry farmers, over 80% of whom are women.
The key challenges going forward:
- Most crops grown by small-holder farmers have low value e.g. maize and cassava.
- Crop yields in Africa are substantially lower than elsewhere in the World. As an example, maize yields average 1.5t/ha on small-holder farms in Southern and East Africa vs 7-10t/ha achieved by commercial farms in the same zones and, over 10t/ha achieved on average in the US. This combined with the firm point means that small-holder farmers achieve very low annual incomes.
- Removing negative environmental impact from sub-optimal farming practices: e.g. erosion, deforestation
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Q4.2/8 - Question: "4.2. To cope with these future challenges, do small farms require new innovations and adaptation techniques? And if so, which?”
From: Gary Vaughan-Smith <[log in to unmask]> (UK-Tanzania)
- The establishment of processing plants for higher value crops that can be grown by small-holder farmers – the ‘market’ for most crops is a processing plant of some sort with associated storage. By introducing a processing plant /market for a high value crop one can help introduce the new crop into small-holder on farm rotation plus increase the income of the small-holder farmer. Introducing a new crop leads naturally to the provision of training and conservation farming techniques. We built the first soya processing plant in Tanzania and this has allowed us to develop an out-grower program for 9,000 farmers to date. Soya is worth ~3-fold the price of maize and works well in rotation with maize because it is from the legume family and maize is from the grass family. Maize yields are increased as a result.
- Education and extension work in conservation farming techniques: use of a mulch, rotation of crops, composting, precision farming etc. to raise yields and reduce environmental impact.
- Distribution of improved/hybrid seed adapted to local conditions bringing benefits such drought and disease tolerance. This raises yields substantially and increases resilience when the weather varies. When improved seed is combined with training on conservation farming techniques, yields can treble from 1.5t/ha into the 4-5t/ha range within 1-2 years.
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