[asia-apec 1529] The case for Small Farms

[Anuradha Mittal]

MULTINATIONAL MONITOR

JULY/AUGUST 2000 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 7 & 8

The Case for Small Farms

An Interview with Peter Rosset


Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D. is co director of the Oakland, California-based 
Institute for Food  and Development Policy -- better known as Food First 
<http://www.foodfirst.org> -- a  nonprofit "people's" think
tank and  education-for-action center whose work highlights root causes 
and value-based solutions to hunger  and poverty around the world, with 
a commitment to establishing food as a fundamental human  right. He is 
author of a number of briefing papers, including "The Multiple Functions 
and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture in the Context of Global Trade 
Negotiations," and is co-author of the book "World Hunger: Twelve 
Myths."

Multinational Monitor: Large farms are commonly viewed as more 
productive than  small farms. What's the evidence that suggests that in 
fact small farms are more  productive?

Peter Rosset: Here at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, 
we've reviewed the data  from every country for which it's available, 
comparing the productivity of smaller farms versus  larger farms. By 
productivity, I mean the total output of agricultural products per unit 
area -- per  acre or hectare.

For every country for which data is available, smaller farms are 
anywhere from 200 to 1,000  percent more productive per unit area.

The myth of the greater productivity of larger farms stems in part from 
the confusing use of the  term "yield" to measure productivity. Yield is 
how much of a single crop you can get per unit area  -- for example, 
bushels of soy beans per acre.

That's a measure that's only relevant to monocultures. A monoculture is
when a single crop is  grown in a field, rather than the kind of 
mixtures of crops and animals that small farmers have.

When you grow one crop all by itself, you may get a lot of that one 
crop, but you're not using the  ecological space -- the land and water 
-- very efficiently.

In monocultures, you have rows of one crop with bare dirt between them. 
In ecological terms, that  bare dirt is empty niche space. It's going to 
be invaded and taken advantage of by some species in  the ecosystem, and 
generally we call those species weeds. So if that bare dirt is invaded, 
the farmer  has to invest labor or spray herbicides or pull a tractor 
through to deal with those weeds. Large  farmers generally have 
monocultures because they are easier to fully mechanize.

Smaller farmers tend to have crop mixtures. Between the rows of one crop 
there will be another  crop, or several other crops, so that ecological 
niche space -- that potential -- is producing  something of use to the 
farmer rather than requiring an investment of more labor, money or 
herbicides. What that means is that the smaller farm with the more 
complex farming system gets  more total production per unit area, 
because they're using more of the available niche space.

It might look like the large farm is more productive because you're 
getting more, say, soybeans per  acre. But you're not getting the other 
five, six, ten or twelve products that the smaller farmer is  getting. 
And when you add all of those together, they come to a much greater 
total agricultural output per unit area than the larger farms are 
getting.

MM: Is that the essential difference -- that the small farms use a more
complex  cropping arrangement?

Rosset: There are a lot of reasons why smaller farms produce more per 
unit area than larger  farmers. One is because of the more complex 
systems, as I explained.

Small farmers also benefit by integrating crops and livestock. By 
rotating pasture and planted  fields, animal manure is used as 
fertilizer, and then the part of the crop that is not consumed by  
humans -- let's say the stalks of a corn plant -- is food for the 
animals. So there's recycling of nutrients and biomass within the 
system. That also makes it more efficient and productive.

Small farmers tend to invest more labor in their land. That too makes it 
more productive.

And the quality of the labor is much better. When it's a farm family 
whose future depends upon  maintaining the productivity of that soil and 
that piece of land, they naturally take better care of it.

When it's a huge corporate farm with relatively alienated wage labor 
doing the work, the employees  do not have the kind of tie to the future 
of that piece of land that they would if they were family  farmers.

MM: It seems as if some of these benefits are not necessarily inherent 
in size but  just in the different styles of farming. Could you have, 
for example, more  complex kinds of farming on large farms?

Rosset: You can, but what tends to be limiting is mechanization. As 
farms get very large, labor  costs and logistics become prohibitive, so 
farmers switch to machinery, and machinery requires  simpler systems. 
With machines, you can't achieve the same level of complexity and 
therefore the level of productivity that you can with a smaller size.

So some of the factors do depend on size and others depend on styles of
management and  relationships between human beings and the land.

MM: Do the general points you're making apply equally to farms in the
United  States and other rich countries as well as farms in the 
developing world?

Rosset: Amazing as it may sound, we find the same general pattern. Some 
of the causes may be  different, and what we consider a small farm 
versus a large farm may be different, but smaller  farms in the U.S. 
produce more than 10 times more value of output per unit area than large 
farms.  Part of that is because smaller farmers in the U.S. tend to 
produce higher value crops, but part of it  also has to do with the same 
factors that explain greater productivity of smaller farms in the Third  
World.

MM: If all this is so, then how come the conventional wisdom is just the 
opposite?

Rosset: For one thing, there are vested interests behind the 
conventional wisdom. Obviously we  have a huge corporate-owned 
agribusiness system in this country that has a vested interest in  
making the American public believe that what they're doing is productive 
and efficient and good for us. So there's a little bit of intentional 
myth creation going on.

There's also the fact that smaller farms don't appear to be economically 
viable. Despite what I've  said about productivity, they're being driven 
out of business in incredible numbers. At the end of  World War II, we 
had more than six million farms in the United States; today we have less 
than two million, and it's mostly the smaller farms that have been 
driven out of business.

We have to look at why that is. My belief is that it's because we have a 
system here that rewards  inefficiency, low productivity and destruction 
of soil -- 90 percent of the topsoil in the United  States is being lost 
faster than it can be replaced.

This system is heavily based on direct payment subsidies tied to the 
amount of land that a farmer  has. American taxpayers paid a record $22 
billion in direct farm payments last year. Sixty-one  percent of those 
payments went to the largest 10 percent of American farmers.

Although those subsidies have been presented to us as helping keep 
family farmers on the land,  they do just the opposite.

Because large farms in the U.S. get such a large subsidy, they can stay 
in business even if they're  selling what they produce below the cost of 
production. The subsidies are tied to area and allow  prices to drop 
below the cost of production. That prevents small farmers from competing 
because: one, crop prices have dropped so low and two, they don't have 
enough land to get enough  subsidies to live on.

The system drives inefficiency and destruction of resources, because the 
large farms are the ones  that strip rural America of trees, destroy the 
soil, dump so many pesticides, and compact the soil  with machines.

It's basically a transfer of money from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to 
large corporate farmers, so  that they can stay in business despite low 
prices, and to the ones who benefit the most -- the  Cargills and ADMs 
of the world who have all this grain that they're buying at giveaway 
prices and  using to capture markets around the world and drive small 
farmers out of business in Mexico,  India, Africa, Asia and South 
America.

MM: Is export dumping the primary cause of farmers in the Third World 
being driven off the land?

Rosset: There are many ways that policies are biased against small 
farmers in the Third World. In  any particular Third World country, 
you'll find that the local landed oligarchy tends to have  captured the 
political system and distorted rural policies in their favor, whether 
it's agricultural  credit, prices, marketing, input supply or trade 
policy.

But all those biases together pale in comparison with the impact of this 
kind of export dumping and  the taking over of local markets by
multinational grain companies. Because of the perverse way that  farm
subsidies work in both the United States and European Economic 
Community, the U.S. and  Europe are dumping agricultural commodities on 
Third World economies at prices often below the  cost of production. 
Local farmers can't compete.

MM: To what extent in developing countries does the Green Revolution 
change the equation? Don't Green Revolution efficiencies require big 
farms?

Rosset: What's happened with the Green Revolution is sort of a microcosm 
of what's happened  in the United States in this century, where 
agricultural production has gone up tremendously, but at  the cost of 
driving people out of the countryside and into the cities, where the 
economy cannot  absorb the excess labor. The Green Revolution promoted 
seeds that required chemicals, irrigation  and other expensive 
investments that could only be adopted by larger, wealthier farmers, but 
not by  smaller, poorer farmers. This allowed the larger, wealthier 
farmers to expand at the expense of the smaller farmers.

During the boom years of the Green Revolution, from 1970 to 1990, world
food production did go  up dramatically. Unfortunately, hunger increased 
in most parts of the Third World as well. The  Green Revolution creates 
what we call the paradox of plenty, or hunger amidst abundance.  
Production goes up, but that production is in the hands of larger 
farmers, who expand at the  expense of smaller farmers. These smaller 
farmers eventually lose their land, move to the cities,  don't find 
jobs, and can't afford to buy the additional food that's produced. So 
the Green Revolution gives you more food and more hunger.

If we ever really want to get at hunger in the future, we have to find a 
different kind of agricultural  model that can have additional 
production come from the hands of the poor themselves. The small  farm 
model is really the only model that will allow us to have more food and 
less hunger, instead of  repeating the mistakes of the Green Revolution 
era when we had more food and more hunger.

MM: What happens when you add the World Trade Organization and proposals 
for  agricultural liberalization into the story?

Rosset: I think the proposed agreements on agriculture in the WTO are 
the gravest threat to rural  communities, small farmers and rural 
ecologies around the world, perhaps the gravest threat in  history.

I've already described a system that's pretty bad, but despite all odds, 
small farmers and peasants  have clung to the land in incredible numbers 
all around the world. But the WTO agreement on  agriculture threatens to 
remove virtually any ability on the part of individual countries to 
protect their agricultural sectors, to stop the flooding of their local 
markets with cheap imports from  Northern countries or other large 
grain-exporting companies. It would take away the ability of  countries 
to have programs that promote or support small farmers or family 
farmers.

Organizations representing small farmers, medium-sized farmers, 
farmworkers and the landless  from all over the world were in Seattle 
last November protesting the WTO. We had the National  Family Farm 
Coalition from the United States, the National Farmers Union from 
Canada, Mexican  farmworker unions, the landless workers union (MST) 
from Brazil, farmworker unions from  Africa, farmers' organizations from 
Africa, farmers' organizations from Thailand, the United Farm  Workers 
union from the United States -- an incredible international coalition of 
rural organizations  all saying that the proposed WTO rules for 
agriculture would be a death sentence for rural communities and rural 
areas around the world.

The upside of the WTO proposals is that they have helped a new global 
food movement coalesce.  It's got all of those rural actors -- farmers,
farmworkers and the landless -- as well as  environmentalists concerned
about pesticides and genetically altered crops and consumers  concerned
about food safety, working together against the WTO.

To me this is very exciting, because counting all the people negatively
affected by the global food  system as we know it, we are really the
majority of the people in the world.

MM: What would the WTO agricultural proposals do and how does that 
differ or  go beyond the already-existing restrictions on Third World 
governments?


Rosset: Many Third World countries have already been hurt by structural
adjustment agreements.  In exchange for renegotiating the debt, the IMF 
and World Bank forced them to open their borders  to imports, among many 
other things. That meant opening their borders to the dumping of  
Northern food surpluses and cheap food and undercutting their local 
farmers.

What the WTO rules would do is raise those agreements to the level of
treaty law, making it a  violation of international law for a country to 
impose any kind of protection on its agricultural  sector. I believe 
that every country, in order to have national security, has to have the 
most important dietary elements for its population produced within its 
borders. But under the WTO rules  you would not be able to maintain 
policies to guarantee that. It would also require that Third World  
countries reduce any remaining tariffs much more dramatically than 
northern countries would have  to reduce theirs.

Basically what happens with free trade or the integration of economies 
is that you go from a  relatively small-sized national economy to a 
larger economy. If you have a small economy that's  too small to support 
a Cargill or an ADM, and you have protection so that it's hard for those 
 companies to get in, then you have a situation where smaller producers 
and smaller companies can  flourish. When you open up into a larger 
economy, you create the conditions where the giant  conglomerates now 
have large enough market conditions to support themselves, and then they 
can  undercut everyone else and drive everyone else out of business. So 
as we go from smaller
economies to larger economies, we create the conditions where the 
largest multinationals can use  their power in the marketplace to drive 
everyone else out of business, with devastating social  consequences.

MM: What is multifunctionality?

Rosset: Multifunctionality is a way of characterizing agriculture that
would set it apart from other  kinds of economic activity, like 
industry. The notion is that farming isn't just producing corn the  way 
that, for instance, a shoe factory produces shoes, because agriculture 
also involves the  management of natural resources. Agriculture has 
impacts on culture and ways of life, and farmers  are the custodians of 
those cultures.

The concept of multifunctionality was developed by the European Union as 
a way of arguing that  agriculture should receive special treatment in 
the WTO and shouldn't be opened to free trade the  way that industry has 
been.

Unfortunately, that notion didn't have a lot of success in terms of 
trying to stop the U.S.-driven  juggernaut towards free trade in 
agriculture.

The United States was able to point out quite rightly that Western 
Europe was being hypocritical in  saying that they wanted protection for 
agriculture in order to preserve its multiple functions, given  the way 
European export subsidies are destroying farming in the Third World. Of 
course the  United States was also being hypocritical, since U.S. export 
dumping is also destroying agriculture  throughout the Third World. As a 
result of the U.S. maneuvering, this very interesting and I think 
potentially very useful concept fell by the wayside.

MM: How would you like to see it incorporated into trade agreements?

Rosset: It should be the basis for excluding agriculture from the WTO
altogether. I think that  agriculture does serve these multiple 
functions. It is very special and important, and it shouldn't be  
subjected to arbitrary and exaggerated free trade policies.

If agriculture were excluded from the WTO, then countries would be able 
to develop policies  towards their rural sectors that were tailored 
towards their own rural needs, their own realities and  their own 
cultures, something that's not permitted under the WTO. 
Multifunctionality does give at  least a theoretical argument for why 
you should exclude agriculture.

MM: How does land reform work to promote the kinds of goals that you're
talking about? In areas where there has been a heavy liberalization and
destruction of the rural sector, does land reform help revitalize these
areas?

Rosset: First of all, I believe that a small farm model is the only way 
to achieve broad-based  economic development, where poor people 
themselves are the source of production within an  economy. I also 
believe that small farmers are better stewards of natural resources, and 
that a small  farm system offers much more sustainability in the long 
run. Without land reform to create a small  farm system in many 
countries of the world, truly sustainable development is not possible.

However, redistributing land is not enough. If we redistribute land but
allow trade liberalization to  move ahead, then we're giving people land 
under economic circumstances under which it's  impossible to survive on 
that land. Land reform is a key policy for rural development, but it 
must go hand-in-hand with stepping back from the free trade agenda in 
agriculture and also with  reversing some of the anti-small farmer and 
anti-peasant biases in agriculture and agricultural  policies around the 
world.

MM: Given that kind framework, what makes for good land reform?

Rosset: Good land reform redistributes good quality land to truly needy
families and gives that  land to them in a macroeconomic environment in
which small farm agricultural production is viable.  It gives them the
support services like access to market, credits and good technical
assistance about  sustainable or organic kinds of production practices 
that provide them an opportunity to succeed.

If land reform gives people very poor land in remote areas with no 
access to markets and a  macroeconomic environment in which agricultural 
production itself is not viable, then we're setting  people up for 
failure.


When we look at the history of land reforms in the post-war period 
around the world, we find a  range from very successful land reforms 
which led to very successful broad-based economic  development -- in 
countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the People's Republic of 
China and  Cuba -- to countries where land reform was an abysmal failure 
and people eventually moved deeper  and deeper into poverty -- countries 
like Mexico, the Philippines, El Salvador, etc.

So land reform has to be a real land reform in which people get good
quality land and in which  market conditions favor their production, and 
in which they have a supportive state for small-farm  production. 
Otherwise, it's doomed to be a failure.

But we do have these great success stories that show that under the 
right circumstances and with  the right set of policies it really can be 
the key to turning the corner towards broad-based economic  development 
with economic benefits for all.

Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst at foodfirst.org.
___________________________________________________________
T O P I C A  The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16
Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics