Supporting oversized contributions of bite-sized farms

Small-scale food producers in Manitoba may be oceans away from their counterparts in Africa, but they share a common need for extension services relevant to their size.

Extension has historically been pivotal to helping farmers keep abreast of the ever-changing dynamics of agricultural production.

Yet when it comes to getting information on how to produce food better, whether they are in it to feed themselves or their neighbours, small farmers fall through the cracks. Industry and government extension services are heavily tilted towards helping large farmers to improve productivity.

Of the world’s roughly 570 million farms, 0.1 per cent exceeding 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) manage half of all the world’s agricultural land to produce 16 per cent of the globe’s food energy. Farms of 124 acres or more grow 55 per cent of the world’s cereals, pulses, sugar and oilseed crops, the UN-FAO reports.

That leaves 85 per cent of the world’s food producers operating small farms that account for just nine per cent of the agricultural land.

Despite their bite-sized stature, these farms make an oversized contribution to the food we eat. These “smallholders” also contribute 16 per cent of the food energy, 12 per cent of the protein and nine per cent of fat derived from crops, the FAO’s 2025 State of Food and Agriculture report says.

There’s a good chance your morning coffee, as well as the herbs and spices in your dinner dishes, came from a small producer. Farms smaller than 12 acres produce 50 per cent of global stimulants, spices and aromatic crops, along with between 20 and 30 per cent of cereals, fruits and vegetables.

Aside from their role as food producers, small farms keep important skills alive in a society increasingly disconnected from its food supply, not to mention the contribution they make to rural employment.

In rural Africa, where 80 per cent of the land is cultivated by smallholders, farming accounts for 42 per cent of all employment and produces 70 per cent of the foods Africans eat, said Joann Whalen, a McGill University soil scientist and affiliate professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco. She works with organizations supporting small farmers in West Africa and the Sahel with tools and data to support soil health.

Whalen was in Winnipeg this month to deliver the Ted Poyser Memorial Lecture on Soil Health at the University of Manitoba. Whalen set the stage by describing the difficulties of connecting millions of small, remote farmers who have diverse needs as well as different cultures and languages with new intel. “The reality is, across Africa, you might have one extension worker per 2,000 farmers, and some places, one extension worker per 10,000 farmers,” she said.

Of course, numbers and scale are different here. Rural Manitobans are well-aware of a vibrant farming subculture supplying roadside vegetable stands, farmers markets and chickens for the freezer. But available data is vague.

About one-third of Manitoba’s 14,500 census farms have annual sales of less than $50,000. There are about 1,100 farms that sell directly to consumers. Out of about 1,000 farms reporting poultry, only about 400 are part of the supply management system, which implies a commercial scale.

Small farmers here are often viewed as holdovers from a bygone era who just haven’t had the good sense to get big or get out. And because they lack the scale of large farms, one-size-fits-all extension and regulations threaten to rule them out of existence.

This winter, Manitoba Agriculture acknowledged these farmers’ unique needs with a series of extension webinars and workshops focused on skills and knowledge that can help small livestock producers succeed.

“The department saw that smallholders are a diverse group that have multiple motivations for growing food for themselves and/or others and are hungry for information — and saw a key role for ourselves in supporting them,” said extension specialist Robyn Harte.

Looking at both initiatives, I couldn’t help but think of the times over the years I spoke with Ted Poyser (1927-2020), a respected advocate in conservation circles for providing extension support for farmers.

I think he’d be smiling.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com