FFSize · Why farm and field size matters: Exploring their role for food security and sustainable agriculture in South America

Why farm and field size matters: Exploring their role for food security and sustainable agriculture in South America

The overall research goal of this action was to advance knowledge about size-related characteristics of agriculture in non-Andean South America to inform future land-use decisions and to foster the implementation of targeted policies to support smallholders’ livelihoods. As global agricultural systems fail to meet food security objectives, are a major cause of global environmental degradation, and are currently undergoing a rapid scale transition, a shift towards more sustainable agricultural systems is mandatory for safeguarding food security, particularly for small-scale farmers. Therefore, a sound understanding of the operational realities of farms and fields with respect to size, productivity, location factors, and socio-economic and environmental impacts is needed to develop targeted actions and policies, but is currently lacking especially for large spatial scales. This action aims to address this knowledge gap by linking farm and field size patterns to each other, identifying their key location factors, and assessing their relationship to agricultural intensity indicators as well as socio-environmental outcomes. Ultimately, this action aims to address the food security-sustainability nexus by mapping global food system challenges. This action has four inter-related objectives. First, novel data sets on farm and field size are overlaid to quantify and map their relationship. Statistical models are used to identify the most important location factors (e.g. accessibility, slope, climatic and soil conditions) that explain their spatial patterns. Second, size-related differences in agricultural land-use intensity of farms and fields are assessed based on input (e.g. fertilizer), output (e.g. production), and system metrics (e.g. yield gaps). Third, size-related environmental and socio-economic impacts of farms and fields are evaluated by linking them to indicators such as landscape diversity, biodiversity intactness, or greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, global food system challenges are mapped to indicate disadvantaged regions where food systems entail negative social and environmental consequences. This action has strong implications for societies and major policy relevance, as it contributes to current discussions on land reform, large-scale land acquisitions, and smallholder vulnerability to food security and climate change. It provides clear links to the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 strategy, CAP reform, and Farm to Fork Strategy.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union