The Future of Small Farms: New Directions for Services, Institutions and Intermediation

We begin by briefly considering the characteristics of smallholder farming and the way that service delivery lies at the heart of the small farm debate. A key issue here are the difficulties that smallholders face in accessing coordinated services for more intensive production and market access, and the way that these differ between staple food crop production, traditional cash crop production, and modern high value product (as opposed to commodity) supply chains. We then review the broad state of affairs in service delivery to smallholders engaged in different types of agricultural production system and issues that arise in the supply of particular services. We argue, however, that the major challenge facing service delivery to smallholders concerns coordination of service development and delivery, and the final section of the paper therefore examines different forms of intermediary institution for achieving such coordination.