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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Mon, 17 Oct 2016 15:55:19 +0000
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I am Karlheinz Knickel, a member of the SALSA project coordination team at the Institute for Mediterranean Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (ICAAM), Evora University in Portugal. I have also supported John Ruane in the compilation of the background document for this e-conference. 

Before I come to the points that I want to raise, I would like to thank already now all who have contributed with highly relevant experiences and suggestions. This will all really help with the transdisciplinary research work we are carrying out!

The issues I am currently particularly interested in relate to the importance of small farms in "a food system" (Section 3.2 in the background document). In SALSA, we have the ambition to express the relative importance of small farms in quantitative terms in our 30 reference regions. I should say first that we will also provide a more differentiated qualitative description of the food system in each reference region with consumption patterns, nutritional issues, interrelations, food governance, limiting and enabling factors, etc. 

Now: Imagine that our reference region is a rural district. My idea is that for this district we can have (estimate) the number of people (each person with a minimum food requirement), the total number of farms, thereof the share and number of small farms (say those below 3 or 5 ha), the 7-10 main food products that are obtained from these farms within the district (with hectares and yields for an average year), and again thereof the share of and quantities for small farms. Theoretically, I can then draw up a first balance sheet (using a suitable common denominator for total food production and total food consumption like kcal), and conclude how much needs to be imported into the region or can be exported. I would also be able to say how much small farms contribute to the food balance. This is obviously simplified and it is based on estimates. In many of the reference regions, rural towns might be included but this does not change the estimation process (let us ignore for now that the question is quite different with respect to megacities whose needs are not covered in our assessment).

Maybe we can go further than that in the food system analysis in our 30 reference regions. For each district, I can probably estimate the number of food businesses (traders, processors, retailers) and describe also in quantitative terms how they are connected with small farms. Some of them will be responsible for importing/exporting food into/out of the district. Others will have most of their transactions within the district. Certain proportions will be home-consumed or appear only in informal markets. My assumption is that for each district we can estimate the related proportions and quantities. Data/estimates, I think, can be derived from available local statistics complemented by 12-15 interviews with local experts and triangulation. And all data could enter a not overly complicated balance sheet.

If the approach works we can, for each reference region (or district), draw a distinct picture of the particular food system, with its subsystems, the role of small farms in the district etc. While this exercise is obviously simplified and it is based on estimates, it provides us with the opportunity to illustrate the diversity in situations and possibly identify patterns, commonalities and differences. And, maybe more importantly, it might also show that small farms do actually play a very significant, sometimes underestimated role in many African and European regions - also in quantitative terms. 

My two related questions to the participants of this e-conference are: 
1. Have you tried something like this already, maybe for one particular region, and what was the experience? 
2. Do you think it can work or what do you think we need to pay attention to when implementing this approach?

Karlheinz Knickel
ICAAM - Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais Mediterrânicas
Universidade de Évora Pólo da Mitra
7002-774 Évora, 
Portugal
SALSA research programme 'Small farms, global markets and sustainable food and nutrition security'
http://www.salsa.uevora.pt/en/
Website: http://linkedin.com/in/kknickel 
http://sd-innovation.blogspot.com/
E-Mail: karlheinz.knickel (at) gmail.com

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/434322/ ].

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