Phys Org published an article stating that a new study finds that small farms in the developing world do not perform better than large ones if costs and labor are factored in rather than just crop production. Since the 1960s, researchers have consistently found that in developing countries crop yields per hectare drop as farms increase in size. Senior Research Fellow David Laborde, says there is still a sizeable section of the development community focused on supporting smallholders for ideological reasons though. The paper’s scale and comprehensiveness support the idea that size doesn’t matter when it comes to farm performance. “Thinking that we want to keep all of them smallholders just because they have high yields will be a dead end.”
Republished in Alpha Galileo