Smallholder farmers

No room for manoeuvre: debt prevents investing in the future

This case study highlights the challenges that farmers in Malawi face when trying to intensify their agricultural production. It focuses on smallholder farmers in the Mwansambo area of Central Malawi. Mwansambo and neighbouring areas are important food and cash crop producing regions. But despite decades of agricultural development interventions, farmers are still struggling to feed their families and invest in sustainable land management

Assisting communities to seek legal redress for land rights violations

With increased pressures on natural resources shifting resource control in favour of commercial interests, IIED is helping communities affected by land rights violations to assert their rights.

International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP)

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP) brings together mountain communities from 11 countries as they seek to revitalise biocultural heritage for climate-resilient and sustainable food systems. IIED provides communications, advocacy and capacity support for INMIP.

As climate changes, Himalayan farmers return to traditional crops

Traditional crops and innovations are offering Himalayan farmers a way to deal with the challenges of climate change, but there is much work to be done for this to become a truly viable alternative

Supporting small-scale farmers in negotiations with agribusiness

Unequal bargaining power often characterises the relationship between small-scale rural producers and agribusinesses. A recent IIED webinar discussed ways to protect and support farmers when negotiating with companies

Growing rice needs more than soil and water

Research in West Africa finds that smallholder farmers are not benefiting enough from investments in irrigation because they are not getting access to the agriculture services they need

2014: the International Year of Family Farming

See how IIED's work during the International Year of Family Farming helped to raise the profile of family and smallholder farming and its contribution to eradicating hunger, reducing rural poverty and more

Smallholder innovation for resilience (SIFOR)

IIED worked with partners in China, India, Kenya and Peru to revitalise traditional knowledge-based – or 'biocultural' – innovation systems of smallholder farmers in order to strengthen food security in the face of climate change. Traditional farmers continually improve and adapt their crops and farming practices in response to new challenges, using local knowledge and biodiversity, generating new technologies and practices

African land deals: Is a policy shift underway?

African governments have played a key role in allocating land to investors. Recent developments hold out promise for more carefully thought out approaches by them in the future.

Ensuring small holders aren't squeezed out of agricultural investments

Tipping the Balance, a new report, has discovered that current popular policies can tip the balance away from small farmers. How can we ensure small holder farmers get a better deal?

How markets can bloom for Africa's smallholder farmers

New deals between flower-growers in Kenya and big retailers such as Walmart offer African farmers a chance to expand.

Provocation 6: Rural youth today, farmers tomorrow?

This seminar is the sixth in a series being initiated by the IIED /HIVOS Knowledge Programme: Small Producer Agency in Globalised Markets.

5-step guide to help farmers evaluate agriculture’s hidden heroes

Smallholder farmers will soon be better able to weigh up the cost and benefits of adopting new practices that support some of the most overlooked contributors to global food security — the insects and other animals that pollinate their crops and boost yields.

Investing in smallholders and workers is good for business

Across the developing world, food systems and supply chains are changing — exports are rising, particularly in fresh foods, supermarkets are playing an increasingly important role and there is a growing number of standards for safety, ethics and environment.

A growing call for organisation

In The Hague, Stockholm and Paris we have heard the call for more support to producer organisations through which small-scale farmers can have a voice in the market. This call was re-iterated at the latest IIED/HIVOS provocation ‘Making markets work for smallholders or wage labour?’ — held in Manchester, United Kingdom, last week, in collaboration with The University of Manchester.

Markets for the poor: the gap between theory and practice

Within development circles, there’s a common, if recent, mantra that the key to reducing poverty in the global South lies in investing in agriculture. Increasingly that investment focuses on building bridges between small-scale farmers and private markets in approaches known as ‘markets for the poor’.

Supporting small-scale farmers: rights or markets?

Development support for small-scale farmers must be based on both the enforcement of basic human rights and a pro-poor development of markets.

Provocation 3: Making markets work for the poor - contents and discontents

The third in a series of six seminars on markets and small-scale farmers took place in Paris, France on 30 March 2011.

Carbon and labels: an unhappy marriage?

Agriculture is just one of the sectors in which carbon labelling — the labelling of a product to show how much carbon (and other greenhouse gases) have been emitted during its ‘lifecycle’ — is being used to show how individual products contribute to climate change. The logic behind applying carbon labels to agriculture seems sound enough: agriculture accounts for 10 to 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and produces much of the food we eat and the products we buy. Finding a way to tell consumers how much individual agricultural products contribute to this should encourage them to choose those products with the lowest carbon footprint and help make agriculture more sustainable. But the truth is that it is very difficult to provide accurate carbon labels for agricultural products. And carbon labelling can impact farmers in the developing world in ways that don’t support development.

Modern agrifood markets: Marginalising small producers even further?

Has agriculture been a winner in the economic downturn?

While the downturn has hit many economic sectors hard, have farmers prospered?

Small producers in the global market

Globalisation, and particularly the food crises of 2007-2008 and 2010-11, have renewed interest in agriculture and small-scale producers.

Peasant Seeds: the foundation of food sovereignty in Africa

A multimedia publication released in Bamako today, 11th December 2008, captures the deep concern among West African farmers about the privatisation of seeds and knowledge