Chapter 64 Plantations Agriculture

The Survival of Family Farms: Socioemotional Wealth and Factors Affecting Intention to Continue the Business are considered. In most of FAO's program countries in Europe and Central Asia, the farm structure is dominated by smallholder farmers and small family farms. Small farms have many needs and limitations to their effective operation and development, which are outlined in the work and require special support. Smallholders and family farms are often economically unviable, and the rural population remains the poorest and most vulnerable. Despite this, they are potentially a key resource for achieving sustainable economic, social and environmental development of the country. Family farming – both globally and in Europe and Central Asia – is an important component in achieving several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this regard, a key goal of the SDGs is to double agricultural productivity and incomes nsmall food producers by 2030. For these reasons, supporting small farmers and family farms is one of the main priorities in Europe and Central Asia. In Ukraine, the development of small farming is significantly limited due to policy and market failures that have occurred over the past 20 years. Governments, private sector actors, and civil society organizations must work together to address these challenges and create an enabling environment for agricultural enterprises to thrive. By doing so, agricultural enterprises can play a crucial role in promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, and ensuring food security for the world's growing population. As indicated above, very few policy interventions targeting smallholders have been identified, and most public agricultural policy is horizontal and primarily being absorbed by bigger farms. Implementing proposed measures will boost effective management of family farms developing.

Small family farms and plantations are the two contrasting systems of agricultural production in the tropics. While the family farm is an old institution, which has existed since time immemorial, the plantation is a new institution brought by the West for extracting tropical cash crops for export to home countries. Large-scale operation of the plantation was necessary for internalizing gains from investment in infrastructure needed for opening vast tracts of unused lands. However, where the communities of indigenous smallholders had already been established, family farms proved to be equally or more efficient producers of tropical export crops with their family labor characterized by low supervision costs, relative to plantations based on hired labor. This advantage of family farms rose as population density increased and rural infrastructure improved, while not only economic but also social drawbacks of the plantation system loomed. Reorganization of the plantation is desired. However, breaking down plantations for operation by smallholders through government coercive measures will likely prove to be disruptive and inefficient A better approach will be to support private sector initiative to reorganize the plantation system into a contract farming system in which an agribusiness enterprise manages the processing/marketing process and contracts with small growers for an assured supply of farm-produced raw materials.

The five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – became independent states in 1991-1992 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union (see Map 1). Immediately after assuming independence, the Central Asian countries embarked, together with the rest of the former Soviet Republics (the Commonwealth of Independent States – CIS), on a program of reforms intended to achieve a transition from a command economy to an economy more in line with market principles. The reforms in the agricultural sector aimed to eliminate the traditionally wasteful use of resources and thus improve productivity. For countries that in 1990 derived more than 30% of GDP from agriculture, improved agricultural performance was naturally expected to boost household incomes, especially in the poor rural areas. These goals were to be accomplished through the process of land reform and farm restructuring, implemented simultaneously with price and trade policy reforms. The reforms were basically expected to change the producer incentives, strengthening profit orientation and thus increasing personal involvement and motivation. One of the striking features of transition from plan to market in CIS agriculture is the dramatic shift from the predominance of large corporate farms (kolkhozy and sovkhozy, generally referred to as agricultural enterprises) to individual or family agriculture based on a spectrum of small farms (Lerman 2008; Sedik and Lerman 2008). The individual sector, combining the traditional household plots and the new peasant farms that began to emerge after 1992, accounts for most of agricultural production and controls a large share of arable land. This is a dramatic change from the pre-1990 period, when agricultural enterprises produced over 70% of GAO and controlled over 90% of arable land. These changes of farm structure, while consistent with the dominant mode in market agricultures, clash with the traditional Soviet philosophy of economies of scale. They also clash with the inherited ideology that views small family farms as an undesirable and even damaging deviation from the capital-intensive, highly mechanized, and commercially oriented mainstream. We therefore witness an ongoing debate, both among CIS decision makers and within the CIS academic community, as to the performance advantages of the two main organizational forms in agriculture – large corporate farms and small family farms. This continuing debate in effect ignores the well-known theoretical considerations that reveal clearly identifiable advantages of small family farms compared with large corporate farms Allen and Lueck 2002). There is generally no evidence of economies of scale in primary agricultural production, while individual or family farms are easier to organize and operate than corporations. Family farms are free from labor monitoring costs and are not prone to agency problems, contrary to large corporate farms employing hired labor and run by outside managers. These factors highlight the importance of individual incentives for farm efficiency and account for the predominance of family farms in market economies, where a family farm is not necessarily a very small farm: the optimal farm size is determined in each particular case by the managerial capacity of the farmer, and it may be quite large for highly capable individualsIn this study we assemble evidence that, in our opinion, shows that individualization of agriculture is associated with the post-transition recovery in CIS and that small family farms outperform the large enterprises, at least by measures of land productivity. The evidence is presented here for the five countries of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (Map 1). Previously similar results have been obtained for the Trans-Caucasian states—Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (Lerman 2006) and to a certain extent also for the European countries of the CIS (Lerman et al. 2007; Lerman and Sutton 2008; Lerman and Sedik 2013). The article is organized as follows. The introduction is followed by Section 1 that sets the regional context by discussing the importance of agriculture in Central Asia. Section 2 describes the three phases of agricultural development in Central Asia (and the rest of the CIS) and introduces the key concept of turnaround point, the year when agricultural production switched from decline to renewed growth. Section 3 discusses individualization of Central Asian agriculture in the process of land reform and examines the sources of renewed growth. Productivity of farms of different organizational types is analyzed in Section 4 and Section 5 establishes a link between policy reforms and agricultural performance. Conclusions present some concluding remarks.

Is there an alternative model to small family farming that could provide sustainable livelihoods to millions of resource-constrained and often non-viable smallholders in developing countries? Could group farming constitute such an alternative, wherein smallholders voluntarily pool land, labour and capital to create larger farms that they manage collectively? In South Asia, for instance, over 85% of farmers are small and increasingly female. Potentially, group farming could provide them economies of scale, a dependable labour force, more investible funds and skills, and greater bargaining power with governments and markets. But can this potential be realised in practice? In particular, can group farms economically outperform small family farms? A rare opportunity to test this is provided by two experiments begun in the 2000s in the Indian states of Kerala and Telangana. Constituted only of women, the groups lease in land to farm collectively, sharing labour, the cost of inputs, and the returns. But the states differ in several respects, including the technical support the groups receive, and their institutional base, composition, land access and cropping patterns. Based on the author's primary sample surveys in both states, this paper compares the productivity and profitability of group farms with that of small individual family farms in the same state. Kerala’s groups perform strikingly better than the predominantly male-managed individual farms, both in their annual value of output per hectare and annual net returns per farm, while in Telangana group farms perform much worse than individual farms in annual output, but are equivalent in net returns. In both states, groups do much better in commercial crops than in traditional foodgrains, where the largely male-managed individual farms, owning good quality land and with longer farm management experience, have an advantage. The factors underlying the differential performances of Kerala and Telangana, and the lessons learnt for possible replication, are also discussed. Overall, the paper demonstrates that group farming can provide an effective alternative, subject to specified conditions and adaptation of the model to the local context.

People in Ukraine are paying more and more attention to goat breeding products, and the demand for the products encourages the population to actively engage in the industry. Currently, about 95 % of the goat herd in Ukraine is concentrated in private peasant farms. Today, none of the livestock industries in Ukraine has such a high concentration of animals among the population. So, within the framework of analytical studies, the main types of family farms have been identified in terms of their size and structure. It was determined that they are divided mostly into three main types: small household plots with up to 10 animals, small family farms with up to 100 animals and farms with more than 100 milking goats. An analysis of the farming aspects of these types of farms and the perspectives for further development revealed some general results and general trends. Goat keeping in small household plots with up to 10 goats is not subject to a deep economic and technological analysis, the management is done with an amateur approach, and the technologies are based on personal family experience and vary considerably between them. The goats are only raised for the production of their own family. Goat keeping on small family farms with up to 100 goats is oriented towards the global experience of running a small family business. These farms produce and sell milk, process it into craft products (cheese, yoghurt, etc.) and provide green tourism services. Farms, which contain more than 100 heads of goats can be classified as agricultural enterprises, where industrial technologies for conducting the industry are applied. The products are sold by wholesale or through retail outlets. In general, an analysis of approaches to farming on different family farms has revealed that small family farms with up to 100 animals are the most promising from a socio-economic point of view. They are more progressive than extensive small household plots and are more flexible in many managing aspects than large-scale farms. Family farms are able to respond to market demand in a timely and sufficiently fast manner, adapt to it and make a profit.

How location, natural resources, and different policies toward the elite's preemption of unused land shaped the historical development of different agrarian structures across Southeast Asia, conditioning agricultural growth performance until today. According to Myint's vent-for-surplus theory, development of the economies of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand from the nineteenth century on took natural advantage of large tracts of unused empty land with low population density and abundant natural resources of the type typically found in Southeast Asia and Africa at the outset of Western colonization. When these economies were integrated into international trade, hitherto unused natural resources (primary commodities the indigenous people had not valued) became the source of economic development, commanding market value because of high import demand in Western economies. The major delta of Chao Phraya River was the resource base of vent-for-surplus development with rice in Thailand; tropical rain forests filled that role in Indonesia and the Philippines with respect to the production of tropical cash crops. This basic difference underlay differences in distribution of farm size: the unimodal distribution of peasants or family farms in Thailand and the coexistence of peasants and large estate farms or plantations specializing in tropical export crops in Indonesia and the Philippines. Differences in agrarian development were also shaped by different policies toward the elite's preemption of unused land. Under Spanish colonialism, the elite preempted unused land in the Philippines wholesale, bifurcating land distribution between noncultivating landlords and sharecroppers in lowland rice areas, and between plantation owners and wage laborers in upland areas. In Indonesia, the Dutch government granted long-term leases for uncultivated public land to foreign planters, but prevented alienation of cultivated land from native peasants, to avoid social instability. In Thailand, concessions were granted for private canal building, but the independent kingdom preserved the tradition of giving land to anyone who could open and cultivate it. Relatively homogeneous landowning peasants dominated Thailand's rural sector. As frontiers for new cultivation closed, the plantation system's initial advantage (large-scale development of land and infrastructure) began to be outweighed by its need to monitor hired labor. The peasant system, based on family labor needing no supervision, allowed Thailand's share of the world market in tropical cash crops to grow, as Indonesia and the Philippines lost their traditional comparative advantage. Moreover, land reform in the Philippines made land markets inactive, with resulting distortions in resource allocation and serious underinvestment in agriculture. This paper - a product of Rural Development, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to review rural development in Asian countries.

A typology to understand the diversity of strategies of implementation of agroecological practices in the French West Indies

The article describes and sets the definition of different farm models under the categories of being family, small, and large-scale commercial farms. The distinction was based on the structure of the workforce and the relationship between agricultural income and the minimum wage. Family farms were dominated by the farming family providing the labour and their income per capita exceeded the net minimum wage in the country. The larger commercial farms feature a predominance of hired labour. Based on surveys, it was found that in 2016 in the EU-28 there were 10,467,000 farms (EU-13—57.3%, EU-15—42.7%). They carried out agricultural activities on an area of 173,338,000 ha (EU-13—28.5%, EU-15—71.5%). Countries of the EU-28 generated a standard output (SO) amounting to EUR 364,118,827,100 (EU-13—17.2% and EU-15—82.8%). After the delimitation, it was shown that small farming (70.8%) was the predominant form of management in the European Union (EU-13—88.2% and EU-15—79.8%) compared to family farming (18.4%) (EU-13—10.5% and EU-15—29%). In most EU countries the largest share of land resources pertains to small farms (35.6%) and family farms (38.6%) (UAA—utilised agricultural area of farms).

Farm productivity and efficiency in the CEE applicant countries: a synthesis of results

Purpose– The purpose of the paper is to present a case example of the power struggles and gender issues one daughter faced when she became a partner, and future successor, in the family business. This paper uses an ethnographic approach in order to study a small family farm in England. The case focuses on a small family farm, these businesses are unique in terms of their values and expectations for succession (Haberman and Danes, 2007), and identified by Wang (2010) as a fruitful avenue for research on daughter succession.Design/methodology/approach– The empirical work was gathered through the use of a single site ethnographic case study involving participant observation as the researcher worked on the family farm and semi-structured interviews with family members over two years.Findings– The results shed light on some of the social complexities of small family farms and power struggles within the family exacerbated by perceived gender issues. The work also highlights the potential threat to the daughter’s position as a partner, from her father’s favouritism of male employees.Practical implications– Institutions that provide help to family farm businesses need to be aware of the potential power issues within the family specifically related to gender, particularly in terms of succession planning.Originality/value– Using ethnography in family firms allows the researcher to be a part of the real-life world of family farmers, providing rich data to explore daughter succession.

The family farming sector is of fundamental importance for food safety in Brazil and other countries. This sector mobilizes 14 million people and represents 60% of the agricultural workers. The small farms represent 75% of the rural properties, 25% of national cultivated land and 35% of the national agricultural production (IBGE, 2006)1. A great diversity of food, especially that which forms the basis of the diet of the Brazilian population originates from small farmers, in particular those who work in the vegetable sector. The main characteristic of this production is that it happens in small family farms with a predominance of short production cycles, strong seasonality, intensive use of manpower and highly perishable products. Besides their logistics difficulties to access their clients, the small family farmers also have problems to insert their products in the institutional and fair trade market that requires volume, special schedules and higher quality standards. That means that the products present short post-harvest periods, which influence the location of the crops, which must be preferentially close to the consumer market. These elements presented demand researches related to process and practices that can increase the shelf life of these products. In this context, we verify a tendency of the family farmers to organize themselves in associations or cooperatives. That is why it is necessary to analyze how logistics can be a strategic instrument of competitiveness for these organizations. They really need to be organized to access markets and that is why logistics management can improve their level of organization, helping them to become more efficient and have better management, not only of their production, but also of storage and distribution processes. The challenge is to distinguish the context of each group of family farmers (vegetables, dairy, handicrafts, tourism and others), even if they do more than one of these activities. There are particularities existing in each one of the logistic chains of family farmers’ products and that makes the complexity of these chains a challenging search for solutions. If the implementation of integrated logistics is complex for large companies, the same logic can be applied to small organizations, even if the contexts are distinct. While large

In Western Europe, the USA and other developed countries agriculture is dominated by small family farms. In Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) a dual structure of farms exists. There are large corporate farms (CF) and small family farms (FF) in CEECs. This article shows that both CF and FF specialise in commodities in which they have a comparative advantage. CF specialise in capital-intensive products and in products with low labour monitoring requirements. FF specialise in products with higher labour monitoring requirements. The implication of this study is that farm structure indirectly determines in which products a country will be competitive on international markets. This is especially important for transition countries where high transaction costs hinder changes of farm organisation. Because of high transaction costs, farms are more flexible in adjusting production structure than adjusting farm organisation in transition countries.

The primary objective of this study was to empirically explore the determinants of family harmony in small and medium-sized family farms. Data from 244 questionnaires from 36 family farms were collected and analysed. Three factors with eigen-values greater than one were extracted, explaining 63.56% of the variance, describing the theoretical dimensions of the dependent variable family harmony and the independent variables existence of family forums and conflict management. The impact of the existence of family forums and conflict management on family harmony was examined by means of multiple linear regression analysis. The results indicate that a significant proportion of the variation in family harmony among family members in family farms is explained by the existence of family forums and the management of conflict among family members. The findings thus indicate that family harmony among family members in the participating family farms is related to the existence of family forums and conflict management. Practical recommendations are made to improve family relationships in family farming businesses.

El objetivo de este trabajo fue caracterizar y establecer una tipología de sistemas ganaderos de Cotopaxi en el norte de la región Sierra en Ecuador. Los datos fueron recogidos mediante encuestas directas a 212 ganaderos y reflejan los principales aspectos técnicos, económicos y productivos de las explotaciones. La tipología fue establecida utilizando técnicas analíticas multivariantes. El análisis de Clusters reveló cuatro agrupamientos. Grupo I, definido como Granjas Pequeñas Familiares (GPF), Grupo II, como Granjas Medianas Familiares (GMF), Grupo III, como Granjas Medianas Familiares Tecnificadas (GMFT) y Grupo IV, como Granjas Muy Pequeñas Familiares (GMPF). Se aplicó un ANAVA. La evaluación indicó diferencias importantes en las explotaciones agrupadas a pesar de que se desarrollan en el mismo entorno agroclimático, operan en los mismos mercados y además, cuentan con información similar, el resultado es un variado universo de situaciones con variaciones relevantes entre sistemas medianos y pequeños por escala y en razón de sus superficies dedicadas a ganadería y a cultivos y sus resultados productivos y de eficiencia medida como ingresos por cada actividad y nivel de gastos.

Economic sustainability plays an important role in shaping conditions for economic growth and social development. The importance of answering the question about the level of sustainability of family farms results from the fact that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, apart from exceptions (e.g., the Czech Republic and Slovakia), are characterized by a fragmented agrarian structure. Hence, the main goal of this article was to answer two questions: (1) whether the countries of Central and Eastern Europe differ in the level of economic sustainability of small family farms; and (2) whether the same socioeconomic factors impact similarly on the level of economic sustainability of small family farms from countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The study was based on surveys conducted in small family farms: in 2018 from Poland (672 farms) and in 2019 in four other countries (Lithuania; 999 farms, Romania; 834 farms, Serbia; 523 farms, Moldova; 530 farms). The publication includes a critical analysis of the literature, structure analysis and correlation analysis. The results show the occurrence of large differences between the economic sustainability of small family farms from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The research indicates that the larger the area of a small-scale family farm, the greater its economic sustainability. The productivity of these farms increases with their economic sustainability. The results also prove a negative relationship between the age of the farmer and the economic sustainability of their farm in all analysed countries. These trends were found in all analysed countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The results of the analyses support the conclusion that agricultural policy instruments aimed at increasing the economic sustainability of small family farms should lead to: land consolidation, a decrease in the age of farm owners through generational changes, and a decrease in employment in agriculture, which would lead to a reduction in labour input in the agricultural sector.