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Future of Small Farms: A Bridge Between Society and the Environment

Small farmers can feed the world, help protect the environment and also provide livelihoods to millions of families who manage them. In addition, they produce valuable farm commodities for market and add value local and global economy. Future of agriculture is in protecting, supporting and improving small farms and the families who manage them. 



There are about 500 million small farms that provide direct and indirect employment to about 2 billion people. Small farms also generate valuable social capital by creating numerous opportunities for local community. They provide fresh produce to local shops, butchers, abattoirs, and support many cafes and restaurants that offer local cuisine, which is not possible without local and fresh produce. Local community depends on the viability of small farm and farming community, which are also source of employment for local population. 

They act as a fabric spread over the landscape and enhance both social and natural capital of the region. Worldwide research indicates that small farms, in contrast to large scale industrial farms, have higher biodiversity, better soil health, are less polluting to the water resources, emit less greenhouse gases, provide more farm jobs, are multi-functional in nature meaning they enhance environment and human health as they use less farm chemicals and fossil-fuel energy. 

Some national and regional policies such as the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) does not differentiate between good or bad practices on the farm. They favour large farms as the payments are linked to the acreage and not for the environmental and social outcomes. Small farms are not adequately rewarded for the social and environmental outcomes they generate through such policies. Moreover, the CAP has not resulted in any positive outcomes for biodiversity or human health as reported in many longitudinal studies. 

For the continuity of small farms, it is critical that future agricultural and food policies should support them for providing and enhancing social and natural capital so that they continue to grow nutritious and diverse food. At the same time, these measures to support good on-farm practices can help correct inadequacies of large farms by providing them incentives to change their practices for long-tern economic and environmental sustainability. There is need to further support and strengthen the ‘social anchor’ in communities, which is farming, through a simplified system to measure, assess and communicate sustainability. Such a system can bring transparency in facilitating public payments for public outcomes. The focus of global agriculture should be on small farms so that their role as a ‘bridge’ is strengthened to bring positive outcomes for society and the environment. 

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