Agri-Insight

SOMETIMES farmers commit a lot of precious time and other resources to farm boundary disputes or looking for more land to add to what they already have, all in the name of trying to boost production levels.

The majority of such farmers essentially belong to the school of thinking that large farms are more productive than smaller ones.

The basis of such a conclusion has always remained difficult to comprehend, especially given that there are all sorts of factors and unanswered questions in the general matrix of agricultural productivity.

By comparing the productivity of small farms versus large farms, people are simply referring to the total output of agricultural products per unit area — per acre or hectare.

In reality, 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 a farmer can get per unit area — for instance, buckets or bags of soya beans per acre.

Naturally, it might look like the large farm is more productive than the smaller one because the farmer is getting more, for example, ground nuts per acre.

But this farmer is not getting the other five, six, 10 or 12 products that the smaller farmer is getting.

And when these are all added together, they come to a much greater total agricultural output per unit area than the larger farms are getting.

On one hand, small farmers also benefit by integrating crops and producing various livestock units.

They can rotate pasture and planted fields, use animal manure as fertiliser, and then that part of the crop that they do not consume — for example the stalks of a maize plant, becomes food for the animals.

This promotes a recycling of nutrients and biomass within the system, which also makes it more efficient and productive.

Interestingly, small farmers tend to invest more labour in their land, which makes it more productive too.

And the quality of the labour is much better.

When it’s a family farm whose future depends upon maintaining the productivity of that soil and that piece of land, they naturally take better care of it compared to larger ones that are normally worked on by hired labour or mechanised implements.

In general, smaller farms are more productive per unit area than their bigger counterparts.

A simple example is here in Zimbabwe where communal farmers have, from the colonial era to the present, been known to produce more maize than the bigger commercial farmers that specialise in few crops that only target cash benefits.

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 labour, 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.

Of course, this practice is in direct contrast to the monoculture practice that most big farms do.

Small farmers are always striving to produce mixtures of crops and animals that in the end bring complimentary benefits to the table in terms of making the farmer’s life more enjoyable and simple.

When the farmer grows one crop all by itself, they may get a lot of that one crop, but they are not using the ecological space — the land and water — very efficiently.

In monocultures, there are rows of one crop with bare space between them.

In ecological terms, that bare space is an empty niche space, it’s going to be invaded and taken advantage of by some species in the ecosystem, and generally these are categorically classified as weeds.

Naturally, if that bare space is invaded, the farmer has to invest labour or spray herbicides or pull a tractor through to deal with the weeds.

Large farms generally have monocultures because they are easier to fully mechanise.

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

In a related matter, Government has introduced the “Pvumvudza” concept for agriculture in a bid to boost both household and national food security.

The concept is rolled out within a very small space of land, with the farmer planting seeds in doubles per hole.

After that, the farmer can even provide water if the weather turns out to be dry, which guarantees him of salvaging something for the belly even under a very difficult season.

The concept by its nature is difficult to implement over large hectarages of land that may only receive water through irrigation or natural rains.

The Pfumvudza concept is cheaper and dovetails with Government’s envisaged vision of a nation in which food shortages should be a thing of the past, while the entire economy will be an upper middle class by the year 2030.

In fact, small hectarages of land have been known to be easy to manage for farmers and when there are pest or disease outbreaks, the farmer can easily monitor the crops and even apply chemical remedies effectively on a one-to-one basis with each plant.

In the event of pests such as the armyworm that requires the farmer to do regular scouting for signs of its presence, it will also be easy to spot the affected plants and act immediately.

This makes small hectarages more productive in terms of yields per unit area as the farmer can also apply manure or even fertilizers direct to the hole where the plant will easily tap into it for nourishment.