Small-Scale Farming: A Review of Challenges and Potential Opportunities Offered by Technological Advancements

Smallholder farmers play an important role in ensuring world food security. In addition to food security, small-scale farming also provides numerous other direct and indirect environmental, social, cultural, and economic benefits by improving crop diversification, job security, and self-sufficiency. However, small-scale agriculture faces several challenges which are further exacerbated by climate change, population increase, water scarcity, and soil degradation. Agriculture has seen a lot of technological advancements in the last few decades. However, access to these advancements has not always been economically viable for small or medium farm operations. This article aimed to review the major barriers to…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
• NI
  National Institute of Food and Agriculture