If smallholders compete in the same markets as the large farms, they lose.

In Africa, most food is produced by women smallholder farmers.

Investment in agriculture in Africa must focus on creating a dynamic smallholder sector.

In the other parts of the country a small population of Sami hunters, fishermen and small scale farmers lived.

It should come as no wonder that smallholders and agricultural laborers represent a combined 70 of those who are unable to feed themselves today.

Moreover, large companies should use their global supply chains to empower their workforces and women smallholder farmers.

In the past, agricultural development has prioritized large scale, capitalized forms of agriculture, neglecting smallholders who feed local communities.

New drought tolerant maize varieties, for example, are already benefiting more than two million smallholder farmers in Africa.

Three quarters of the world s poorest people get their food and income from farming small plots of land, and most of these smallholder farmers are women.

If smallholder farmers are to be given the opportunity to become viable businesses, it is essential that they be connected to markets.

Even if smallholders are able to produce a surplus, their lack of access to downstream activities, such as processing and marketing, prevents them from selling it easily.

He stressed the importance of microfinance and social capital formulation, which could alleviate risks to smallholders exposed to crop failure, business failure and land degradation.

Indeed, smallholder farmers are often extremely efficient producers per hectare, and can contribute to a country s economic growth and food security.

In Haiti, and in developing countries around the world, smallholder farmers can contribute to food security and economic growth just as they did in Vietnam.

Each link in the value chain, from the smallholder to the local trade agents and agro processors to regional and national markets, needs to be strengthened.

But supporting that smallholder in launching a farming business that could generate a five fold increase in income amounts to poverty eradication.

At the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), we believe that farming, regardless of size or scale, must be seen as a business, and smallholder farmers as small scale business owners rather than poor people who need handouts.

For example, Vietnam transformed itself from a food deficit country to the second largest rice exporter in the world by developing its smallholder farming sector.

The panellist from the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture said that agricultural smallholders were in fact private sector actors, not aid recipients.

I say she because the majority of small scale farmers in Africa are women.

There was the alienation of smallholders property, in what was known as the enclosure movement. And there were complaints about urban pollution and inhumane factory conditions in what William Blake called Britain s dark Satanic mills.

The rise in food prices is leading to a land grab, as powerful politicians sell foreign investors massive tracts of farmland, brushing aside the traditional land rights of poor smallholders.

We should consider not only how to improve the ability of smallholder farmers to grow food we also must strengthen their ability to participate in markets, while improving the way those markets function.

As a country becomes more affluent and farming practices become more efficient, smallholdings may persist as a legacy of historical land ownership practices.

Smallholders, by contrast, produce at a higher cost. They are often very productive by hectare, since they maximize the use of the soil, and achieve the best complementary use of plants and animals.

ROME Recently, I was on a road in the Southern Choma District of Zambia to meet with Rosemary Pisani, a smallholder farmer and mother of eight who struggled to feed her children prior to joining a farmer s cooperative to raise goats.

In third world countries, smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming.

The economy will have a simple structure in the coming years, with most economic activities focused in five sectors smallholder, or peasant, agriculture reconstruction port services and light manufacturing local small scale trade and public services, including health care and education.

Micro finance projects often provided a critical start up for refugees, enabling them to improve their own situation and make a productive contribution to the local economy.

Improving carbon productivity requires improving land productivity.

Additionally, about one third of small business operators in Australia are now women.

The Productivity of Trust

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In addition, they represent 54 per cent of the country's microlevel entrepreneurs (175,000 women).

This reflects the fact that the availability of efficient support services for ICTs is imperative to improve the productivity and sustainable growth of SMEs, especially in rural areas.

Information services. In order to improve the productivity and competitiveness of SMEs, UNIDO has assisted with the establishment of national, sustainable capacities for information and ICT support activities.

Their poverty causes low farm productivity, and low farm productivity reinforces their poverty.

Those gaps must be significantly narrowed through the transformation and reconstruction of our small economies, which have historically been reliant on a narrow production base and preferential market access.

One cornerstone of the project was smallholder farmers, meaning peasant farm families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia working farms of around one hectare (2.5 acres) or less.

Indeed, half of the world s smallholders are women, and we must keep in mind their punishing task of walking long lengths to get their produce to market.

There is growing recognition that these smallholder farmers and their rural communities are a major part of the solution to food insecurity and poverty but only if they have what they need to do their jobs.

The Best, Brightest, and Least Productive?

If smallholder farmers have the basic infrastructure they need to get their goods to market, they will not only be able to feed themselves and their communities, but will contribute to wider food security.

In an agricultural society, the difference between the richest and the poorest, the most productive and the least productive, was five to one. Why?

NEW YORK The G 8 s 20 billion initiative on smallholder agriculture, launched at the group s recent summit in L Aquila, Italy, is a potentially historic breakthrough in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty.