Smallholder Agriculture

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Smallholder Agriculture is the major form of food production in the world.

[edit] Subsistence farming

It is typically based on family farms in poor countries and is often associated with subsistence production - although this type of production is not absent in developed countries. In its economic use, the term 'smallholder agriculture' is often simply a description of the production unit, and it is also often assumed that the smallholder is a passing phase on the way to industrial agriculture.

[edit] Lifestyle farming

The term is also used to encapsulate the lifestyle and worldview of smallholders as an integrated process that retains a link to nature. This holistic approach, often captured as a composite of Religion-and-Agriculture, is thus seen as a basis for learning of the deficiencies of modern intensive agriculture and life in general.

Smallholder agriculture in this second context is the basis of activities that aim to identify the contentedness of smallholders even in poverty in comparison with persons following modern lifestyles. This process has been variously styled as happiness and wisdom.