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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:11:48 +0000
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This is Siera Vercillo, again.

Encouraged by John, the moderator, I am expanding upon the strategy regarding smallholders mentioned in the first paragraph of my earlier contribution (#36). I am glad to hear there is interest as I did not want to make my earlier contribution too long to read. This is in relation to answering the question of how to define 'small farms' - questions 3.1.1-3.1.3 - with an example of how I am doing so in my doctoral research focused on gender relations and differences in smallholder farming and food security in northern Ghana.

I have conducted the first phase of my research - which is a series of qualitative methods, mostly in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus group participatory methods based in two rural communities - in a particular district in northern Ghana where I have worked for a few years in the agriculture sector. After deciding to focus this in two communities for comparison purposes based on a number of theoretical qualities, I situated myself in each community and asked to speak with 'women small farmers' by those contacts I had previously (staff with Ministry extension and private agribusiness extension) (convenience sampling). 

Then after interviewing the farmer, they would introduce me to other 'small scale farmers' (snowball sampling). It is important to note that I intentionally biased my sampling to ask to speak with female farmers. This is because my research is specifically about gender and I know that the sector is biased towards men (as said in the literature and as experienced in my previous work which very rarely engaged women, despite their recognized contribution). 

While intentionally biasing my sampling, I still had almost half of respondents being women, which is closer to the stated demographic of farmers in the country and on the continent. In my interviews with them, I spent the first 15 minutes getting to know who they were and why they were small scale. Points typically raised were about what crops they grew, on how much land, for what purpose, how much 'improved' technology they used, what practices, and their barriers or challenges. Sometimes the snowball sampling led me to other farmers who were commercial and they would tell me in those first 10 or so minutes that they were not small scale (there were about 5/6 of these in total). 

After reaching saturation in each community at around 25 interviews with small scale farmers in each (around 50 in total), I could then compare their definitions of small scale farming. Socially specific definitions are recognizable - many participants did not discuss their livestock or production of vegetables in backyard gardens and such, pointing to me that this might not be something people see as farming. There were a few participants who mentioned that they were farmers even though they only had animals and not crops. I am not sure how to interpret this. So if you ask participants about farming and you do not specifically ask about soup ingredients or animals in this context, then they will likely be excluded in any method you use (alongside any method that does not ask about women's farming, for example in interviewing a household head who is male). To clarify, asking about food ingredients or subsistence ingredients was not enough, soup ingredients specifically were left out. 

Focus groups were with small scale farming based organizations or community based organizations male only and female only who typically included husbands and wives from the same households. I used these qualitative methods to get a better sense of what socio-cultural values and meaning are behind things like land, certain crops, animals, technology and what it means to be a woman / man farming and how men and women are different and engage with each other to farm. Notably, women's farming was much smaller in land size, but almost entirely grown for money. 

In the second phase of my research (which I have not yet conducted), I am going to conduct a representative structured survey of individuals across the district where these two communities are based. The statistical measures of association will be classified based on descriptions and trends provided by the 50 farmers who define small scale. The land range in this context, for example, included between 1-12 acres. Anything above that was not considered small. Yields or production amount per acre was considered not relevant as a marker of difference between small scale or large scale farming. Having animals was also considered a marker of difference, but I have yet to decide how to classify this. I do intend on dis-aggregating the different kinds of farmers (based on socio-demographics like age, ethnicity etc.) and measure if there are any significant correlations between them and food insecurity and poverty (quantified by measures recommended by the FAO). Any measure of association will also be explained by the qualitative methods or the way different kinds of participants described food insecurity, poverty, well-being, barriers to farming etc. which also differed based on their gender, which was also explained to me why there are differences.  

Any feedback or recommendations you have on this strategy is very welcome as I am attempting to maintain the scientific rigour in this after years of doing research for NGOs and practice, which tends to care less about those sorts of things, despite their importance.

Siera Vercillo
Doctoral Candidate
Environment, Health and Hazards lab
Geography Department, 
Western University
Canada
E-mail: sieravercillo (at) ewb.ca
+1-519-661-2111 x 82818
Personal website: http://mydevelopmentdiary.wordpress.com 

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