The United Nations University project on People, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC) has used the traditional skills of smallholder farmers -- for cultivating their crops, managing the soil, water and vegetation and maintaining their livelihoods in difficult circumstances - to produce this book. Arguably, these farmers have conserved and even created more biological diversity and more economically important species than all protected areas combined.
The book draws on the experience of demonstration sites that are the farmers' own enterprises, combining superior production...

Marx, Lenin and Kautsky all regarded family farming as doomed to be split into capitalist farms and proletarian labour. Most modern economists regard family farming as an archaic form of production organization, destined to give way to agribusiness. Family Farms refutes these notions and analyses the manner in which family farmers have been able to operate with success in both developed and developing countries, using examples wherever these are illuminating. This book begins by reviewing theoretical arguments about agricultural structures, and defines family farming. This is followed by five...