Comment
From big to small: the significance of smallholder farms in
the global food system
When many of us contemplate the role of agriculture
in feeding 7·2 billion people, we picture large-scale,
industrialised, and efficient systems that produce lots of
food that is shipped around the world. Although those
systems are relevant, they are only one dimension of
what agriculture consists of, who feeds us, and where
those farmers reside. In addition to big farms, the world is
also fed by approximately 570 million smallholder farms,
which use less than two hectares of land and account
for roughly 12% of the world’s agricultural land.1 83% of
these farms are in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,1 where
they produce some of the major commodities consumed
in the world and provide more than 70% of the food
calories to people living in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa;2
yet many of these farmers are poor and somewhat
neglected. These farmers lack the necessary capital for
rural development and transformation, including natural,
built, human, social, political, and financial capital.3
A requisite exists to support all sizes of farms to
ensure that a consistent, sustainable supply of diverse,
nutritious, and safe foods are available and accessible
to all through their food systems and environments.
However, many question whether food systems—
consisting of many actors in the agricultural food
chain—are fulfiling human health and nutrition
requirements.4 Looking at statistics, the state of the
world’s food systems is bleak: roughly 793 million go to
bed hungry, 125 million children under the age of five
years are stunted, 2·1 billion adults are overweight and
obese, and many are deficient in key micronutrients,
particularly iron, zinc, and vitamin A.5 Poor diets play
into these multiple burdens of malnutrition and are
now considered the leading risk of the global burden of
disease.6
In this inaugural issue of Lancet Planetary Health, Mario
Herrero and colleagues7 shed light on how smallholder
farmers contribute to the quantity and quality of
our global food supply. In their Article, they seek to
better estimate where these farms are located, what
agricultural commodities (plants, livestock, and fish)
are produced from farms of different sizes, how diverse
these commodities are, and what their relevance to
nutrient production is.
www.thelancet.com/planetary-health Vol 1 April 2017 e15
First, they found that most large farms (>50 ha) are See Articles page e33
found in North America and South America, Australia,
and New Zealand, and produce 75–100% of all cereal,
livestock, and fruit in these regions, whereas small
farms (<20 ha) found in sub-Saharan Africa, South
Asia, southeast Asia, and China produce 75% of food
commodities globally, and 50–65% of the production
volume of major food groups. Very small farms (<2 ha)
in the same region produce approximately 30% of most
food commodities. Second, most of the commodities
produced on small farms come from diverse landscapes,
producing a variety of horticulture, roots, tubers, fish,
and livestock, whereas most of the plantation-based
crops, such as sugar and oil, are produced from less
diverse landscapes, mainly large-scale farms. Finally,
mixed production systems generate more diversity of
key nutrients (zinc, iron, vitamins A and B12, and folate)
essential for human health. Most global micronutrients
(53–81%) and protein (57%) are produced on more
diverse agricultural landscapes (H-index>1·5). One
thing to note is that in farm landscapes with higher
agricultural diversity and more nutrients generated
from that diversity, farm size does not matter.
Herrero and colleagues’ findings show that the one-
size-fits-all approach does not work for global food
production. Both small and large farms play important
roles in ensuring we have enough food that is diverse and
nutrient-rich. While industrialised agriculture suggests
domination of food systems, smallholder farms play a
substantial role in maintaining the genetic diversity of
our food supply, which results in both benefits and risk
reductions against nutritional deficiencies, ecosystem
degradation, and climate change. Herrero and colleagues
argue that if we want to ensure that the global food
supply remains diverse and generates a rich array of
nutrients for human health, farm landscapes must also
be diverse and serve multiple purposes.
However, the world is moving in the wrong direction.
National food supplies have become more homogenous
in the number of crops cultivated, which results in an
interdependency among countries in accessing a diversity
of foods and nutrients to meet human needs.8 Farm sizes
are decreasing in Africa and Asia, and will continue to do
 Comment
so.9 As diminishing of genetic diversity across farms and
decreasing land size is compounded by absolute poverty
in rural places, will farmers abandon these small, yet
diverse landscapes for off-farm opportunities or better
livelihood strategies in urban centers?
Farmers grapple with many challenges: climate
change, demographic shifts, migration, and food policy
decisions, such as subsidies and trade, which affect
decisions. Many smallholder farmers struggle to make
ends meet, and historically, we have witnessed an urban
bias and disinvestment in rural areas.10 It is crucial that
we invest in smallholder farmers and their own rural
transformation and human capital: we need to better
connect rural farmers to markets, empower and engage
women farmers, and jumpstart entrepreneurship among
smallholder farmers. Food security and nutrition strategies
are needed to ensure that farming families are healthy and
capable of continuing to make important contributions to
the overall dietary diversity of the world’s population.
Jessica Fanzo
John Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies and Bloomberg School of Public
e16 www.thelancet.com/planetary-health Vol 1 April 2017
Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
jfanzo1@jhu.edu
I declare no competing interest.
Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access
article under the CC BY license.
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