New from IFPRI: Defining Smallholder Agriculture in Ghana

Strategies for boosting the agricultural economies of developing countries usually focus on small farms, attempting, for example, to link smallholders with markets through production chain development. This survey found strong inequalities in landholding distributions within Ghana's small-farm sector in all regions of the country, and found that many of the broadly perceived defining characteristics of smallholder agriculture - such as low input use and low market engagement - are negatively correlated with landholding size. The crowding of farms at the smaller end of the small-farm spectrum in Ghana suggests that rural development strategies based on expanding existing market chains will face challenges in connecting with the bulk of small producers, who are less well endowed than average statistics indicate.

IFPRI Dicusssion Paper 823 "It's a Small World After All: Defining Smallholder Agriculture in Ghana" by Jordan Chamberlin, November 2008 available for download at http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/dp/ifpridp00823.asp