Small farms farm better.
How Small Farms Can (Sustainably) Feed The Future
And large farms can’t.
Small farms are the best hope that we hold of feeding a future of 9 billion (and beyond). At the same time they hold the potential to redistribute wealth, conserve biodiversity, secure livelihoods for some of the world’s most marginalised and ensure a continuation of traditional cultural relationships with the land. They are truly our most sustainable option.
But before I delve into small farms and all their virtues, I first want to briefly talk about sustainability. It’s a term that gets thrashed around quite a bit, often out of context. I’d like to take steps to remedy that.
The principles that underpin sustainability as we know it today originated with the Swiss fishery and agro forestry industries creation of “Maximum Sustained Yield” management plans in the 1830s and 40s. Sustainability is not some new-fangled concept that simply became trendy with scientists in the early 2000’s; it has a long history, despite our long worldwide failure to adopt and apply it.
However, it wasn’t until 1987 that sustainability rose to prominence as a globally accepted concept, with the publication of Gro Harlem Brundtland’s report Our Common Future. The report, commissioned by the World…
