Opportunities and Challenges of Smallholders and Smallholding

Smallholder farms or smallholdings comprise livestock and livestock, livestock and crops and crops and crops farming systems. It involves nutritional inter-relationships of integration and interdependency between livestock and crop systems and crop and crop systems. There are an estimated 500 billion smallholder farms worldwide supporting livelihoods of about 2 billion people, most of who are in Sub-Sahara Africa and Asia. Smallholders make more than 60% of agricultural producers supplying local and international food markets, and employ about 70% of farming communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and Asia. However, these farming systems experience financial, technological, infrastructural, market access, environmental and policy and institutional framework challenges. Considering the importance of smallholder farming systems, attempts should be geared towards mitigating the challenges and promoting productivity and sustainability of these farming systems. This is expected to lead to improved food and nutrition security and food safety and translate to improved livelihoods of smallholder farmers and increased income from agriculture products. The authors' of this book focus on the challenges and opportunities of smallholders and smallholding systems all over the world.