Smallholder Farmers and Farming Practices: Challenges and Prospects

This book emanated from the research outputs of different authors whose diverse academic traditions and wide geographic spread play a major role in enriching its contents. The volume is mainly a compilation on smallholder farmers and their practices. The book also highlights the challenges, which small farmers frequently encounter, and the opportunities or prospects, which abound in their farming operations. Compartmentalized into three major sections, this 10-chapter volume provides an account of thought-provoking scenarios and narratives, which are rich and well suited for policy development and praxis. The book, therefore, compels policy-makers to see opportunities in every challenge associated with smallholder agriculture rather than see challenges in every opportunity therein. While some of the chapters present the results of field experimentations that highlight the impacts of certain geographic features and fertilizer use on root tuber cultivars' production, some explore the effect of climate change on smallholder farming practices and how small farmers counteract the vagaries of weather conditions, which might impede their livelihoods. Nonetheless, most of the chapters largely rely on sociological methodologies to identify pertinent issues affecting the smallholder agriculture. While some of the issues underscore the advocacy for organic farming and its associated benefits or opportunities, others emphasize the uniqueness of certain agro-ecological farming systems and the opportunities, which they might offer resource-poor, smallholder farmers. A number of the chapters specifically provide some historical perspectives on the political economy of smallholder agriculture and identify the motivating and demotivating factors influencing young farmers' affection for farming while some accentuate the pertinent role of research in determining small farmers' response to the adoption of improved biotechnology in achieving food security. Throughout the book, authors' findings and viewpoints converge in many places on topical issues relating to environmental sustainability, mitigation of climate change, ethics of the agri-food systems and agricultural policy.