Peter Rosset argues for small farms in the north... In 1998, the US Department of Agriculture's National Commission on Small Farms published a landmark report on the importance of small-farm agriculture, and the necessity of both preserving small farms and promoting them for the future. Coming from one of the world's most pro-globalised farming governments, the report, A Time To Act, was extremely significant: Among the many benefits of small-farm agriculture, it listed: What is true for the US istrue for much of the world. The fact is that, despite the generalised assumption that large, capital- and chemical-intensive farms are more productive and efficient than small farms, this is often not the case. One reason for this is that, because conventional methods of measuring 'productivity' and 'efficiency' are flawed, we are receiving the wrong answers to our questions. Farm productivity is generally measured in terms of 'yield' - the production per unit area of a certain type of crop. Often, thehighest yield of a single crop is obtained by planting it in a monoculture in a large field - hence, in these terms, large farms are often deemed more 'productive'. But while such a monoculture produces high yields of certain crops, it provides nothing else of use to either the farmer or the environment. When the total output of farms - the sum total of everything they produce - is used as a measurement, rather than yield, small farms often come out on top.
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