Smallholder Farming in Less-Favored Areas: Options for Pro-Poor and Sustainable Livelihoods

Smallholder farming in less-favored areas (LFAs) is simultaneously constrained by agro-ecological, economic, and institutional factors that keep households “trapped” in vicious circles of chronic poverty and resource degradation. Common strategies to address rural poverty by increasing returns to agricultural production are likely to fail, since the opportunities for investments in improved resource management regimes are severely limited due to strong input complementarities and high transaction costs. Therefore, poverty reduction in LFAs can be achieved only through an integrated strategy that focuses on the right mixture and sequence of interventions that systematically address the mostlimiting factors that constrain access and returns to physical, human, financial, and social capital (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2005).