New Evaluation of Small Farms: Implication for an Analysis of Food Security

Zahra Ardakani, Fabio Bartolini and Gianluca Brunori
Additional contact information
Zahra Ardakani: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Economics, University of Pisa, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Fabio Bartolini: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Economics, University of Pisa, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Gianluca Brunori: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Economics, University of Pisa, 56124 Pisa, Italy

Agriculture, 2020, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: Farm structure is a multi-dimensional concept that can be measured through different criteria. Meanwhile, farm structure has been identified to discern small farms or well-endowed farms from the other farms. Distinguishing and identifying these two groups have practical implications for understanding the dynamics in rural areas and the effectiveness of target measures in these categories. The existing literature lacks a better definition of small farms based on the different criteria used. In this paper, we have developed composite indicators to apply to the concept of farm structure to re-define small farms and discover their role in achieving food security in Europe. By clustering countries using the composite indicator of farm structure, we estimate that more than 80 percent of food across Europe is produced by multi-criteria small and medium farms, but the partial productivities of agricultural land and labor in these countries that have the majority of multi-criteria small and medium farms are much lower than the large ones. Then, an estimate of a spatial econometric regression model was done to recognize how farm structure, a representative of farm size, can affect food availability, which is representative of food security. The results show that improving the structure of farms in a country not only improves its food security but also improves its neighbors’ food security. Hence, improving the structure of multi-criteria small farms is a major part of the solution to improve and achieve food security. Recognizing and understanding the diversity of multi-criteria small farms by considering the specific products and countries is necessary for designing appropriate innovations and policies for supporting more productive multi-criteria small farms.

Keywords: multi-criteria small farms; food security; partial productivity; composite indicators; spatial econometric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/3/74/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/3/74/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:10:y:2020:i:3:p:74-:d:332069

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().