Smallholder

A small farmer is a farmer with a small allocation of production factors. Precise definitions are usually not available, and the classification varies from country to country.

According to the World Bank about 1.5 billion people worldwide live in smallholder households. A part of the small farmers selling surpluses to markets, including the growing high value products markets. The majority of small farmers engaged in subsistence farming only due to lack of production factors and other disadvantages. Smallholder production is often technically more efficient than large farmers ( Theodore W. Schultz, " poor but efficient" ), but at the same time mainly unproductive, due to lack of access to technology and economies of scale can be realized less often.

Smallholder agriculture is due to the usually low productivity closely linked to poverty. So are 50 percent of the world's hungry people smallholders. Due to a lack of alternatives, it is in many developing countries is a major part of the population, the main source of income, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.