Small can be beautiful for organic market gardens: an exploration of the economic viability of French microfarms using MERLIN

Kevin Morel, Magali San Cristobal and François Gilbert Léger

Agricultural Systems, 2017, vol. 158, issue C, 39-49

Abstract: Microfarms are commercial soil-based market gardens cultivating organic vegetables with less than 1.5ha per farmer in rural France. Microfarms typically grow crops in both outdoor and protected (tunnel) areas. Despite their growing popularity among young farmers with no agricultural background, there are no data on expected income generated by these small-scale farms. Our objective was to determine the economic viability generated by a given agricultural area based on distinct microfarm scenarios. We used the stochastic model MERLIN to simulate 18microfarm scenarios combining three technical systems (varying with respect to the mechanization level, use of commercial inputs, cropping density, and number of cropping cycles per year), two marketing strategies (varying with respect to the length of the selling period and the range of crops grown), and three investment hypotheses (varying with respect to the level of bank loans and the percentage of workload used for self-built equipment). Viability was calculated from the number of simulations that generated a selected minimum monthly income (600, 1,000, or 1,400 Euro) for a maximum annual workload (1,800 or 2,500h).

Keywords: Agroecology; Short supply chains; Permaculture; Urban agriculture; Small farms; System redesign (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agisys:v:158:y:2017:i:c:p:39-49

DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2017.08.008

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