Abstract
Small farms constitute most of the world’s farms and are a central focus of sustainable agricultural development. However, the relationship between farm size and production, profitability, biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions remains contested. Here, we synthesize current knowledge through an evidence review and meta-analysis and show that smaller farms, on average, have higher yields and harbour greater crop and non-crop biodiversity at the farm and landscape scales than do larger farms. We find little conclusive evidence for differences in resource-use efficiency, greenhouse gas emission intensity and profits. Our findings highlight the importance of farm size in mediating some environmental and social outcomes relevant to sustainable development. We identify a series of research priorities to inform land- and market-based policies that affect smallholders globally.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The computer code that support the findings of this study is available in the Supplementary Information.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge funding from the University of British Columbia 4-Year Doctoral Fellowship & Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight grant no. 435-2016-0154.
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V.R., N.R. and H.W. conceived the idea and designed the data collection process. V.R. collected and coded the data. V.R., Z.M. and N.R. designed the analysis. V.R. and Z.M. conducted the analysis. V.R., Z.M., N.R., H.W. and D.J. contributed interpretations of results. All authors wrote the paper.
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Ricciardi, V., Mehrabi, Z., Wittman, H. et al. Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms. Nat Sustain 4, 651–657 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00699-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00699-2
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