Very small farmers: are they really marginal?

Bangladesh is a land-scarce country. Arable land per rural household has been continuously declining during the last two decades. It is not, therefore surprising that a large majority of farms are of small sizes.
Another related feature that has so far remained unnoticed is that the number of tiny holdings of less than one acre has been growing. Holdings below half acre (or one acre) are often referred to as marginal farms.
The notion instantly flashes their low importance within the farm sector. This group attracted attention as candidates for safety net allocations or poverty reduction strategy.
In the process, important aspects of the role of this group of tiny farms (in this write-up referred to as 'very small farms') in the rural and agricultural growth have been lost sight of.
In the following discussion two issues will be addressed in turn.
Share of very small farms and the factors contributing to the rise in the number of such farms;
Whether this group demonstrates productive efficiency
Less than one acre-sized farms constitute about 52 percent of all farms while only 15 percent farms own above 2.50 acres. However, the very small farms own only 17 percent of all agricultural land while the medium and large owners own 49 percent.
The very small farm size group which accounts for more than half of the total farms should not be relegated to an unimportant position by viewing them as 'marginal' farms.
Moreover, the share of very small farms is increasing with an addition of about one lakh farm households sliding down to less than half acre group annually.
One obvious question is that as long as the owners of the small farms intend to continue as farmers, why do they not purchase more land and become owners of a more viable or economical size of farm?
On the contrary, they may also give up farming, sell the farm land and invest in alternatives.
Land market situation provides answers to these questions. Land price is so high that low income people cannot buy a significant parcel of land. Moreover, land price is escalating and such price expectation explains why they cling to the possession of the land.
The reason behind the rise of land price is that arable land frontier has already been reached, and there is no scope of bringing in new land for cultivation.
In fact, not only arable land has been exhausted, a process of decline of total arable land has already set in due to the non-farm uses of land.
Decline of total farm land makes it clear that the situation is irreversible with no scope that the farms with very small size will have better chance of getting access to land in future.
A farm area of less than an acre can be hardly sufficient for the subsistence of a family. Although there is no readily available figure of standard size of farm that can ensure subsistence of an average family, many studies have used 2.5 acres as the norm.
Using the recommended rice consumption per person, expenditure share of low income groups on non-food, the current rice production per acre and assuming an average family size of four persons, simple calculation has been done to obtain an estimate of the area of farm needed for ensuring subsistence.
This estimate stands at two acres, as productivity per acre has increased during the last three-four decades.
The other concern in this context is whether the very small farms can be as efficient as their larger counterparts.
A number of forces may work together to hinder their efficiency. They have no or low savings and therefore cannot invest on modern inputs. They cannot use farm machinery because the investment will not be fully utilised on the tiny plot.
On the contrary, there may be reverse forces at work as well. Small and very small farmers may even be more efficient. To eke out subsistence from their small piece of land, they use all means to raise productivity.
In fact, studies on Indian agriculture have demonstrated that smaller farmers have higher productivity. Previous studies in Bangladesh show mixed results. Some studies found medium farmers more efficient than small and larger ones.
However, the question of efficiency of farms of smallest size did not receive separate attention.
Analysis of HIES data on households' farm production shows that production per acre of land of small farms is higher than large and medium farms and for the smallest farm size, it is even higher.
Identification of the factors contributing to their highest land productivity can have useful policy implications and therefore the major factors are being highlighted. They have the required motivation.
Therefore, they aim to obtain subsistence from the tiny holding. They use larger dose of family labour to achieve this.
This 'self-exploitation' of self-employed farmers has been borne out by analysis of HIES (2010) data. According to the analysis, the smallest holdings use much larger days of family labour per acre of land.
Data analysis also shows that total labour use, including family and hired labour, per acre is also smaller among large and medium farmers.
One will obviously look for strategies and policies for raising the productivity of large farmers and for increasing the labour use in those farms.
One of the ways to raise productivity is that they resort to mechanisation of some of the operations of cultivation. This may further reduce their labour input per acre.
At present, women and young persons of large and medium farms contribute only a small share of family labour in field crop production. The constraints here are mainly social factors. Therefore, overcoming this barrier requires a change in social attitude.
Farming should be made an attractive occupation for young men and women and this requires such transformation that cultivation will be viewed as farm enterprises. Awareness raising and application of modern devices can contribute to such change.
Evidences of higher productivity of very small farmers give a clear message that they are by no means marginal farmers. They deserve policy attention to improve their access to credit and farm inputs.
At the same time, the paper presents an encouraging picture by highlighting the fact that production per acre can be increased through application of more labour input in medium and large farms.
The findings also have implications for land redistribution. Whenever possible, khas land should be distributed to very small farmers. This will not only reduce inequality but will raise productivity.

The writer is a research director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.