Whilst not romanticizing small scale farming and acknowledging that small scale farmers are often forced to exploit their resources, I certainly know that they are a formidable force to be tapped to prevent major foodshortages in the the world.

To tap this force the general public needs to pay more for food. The world cannot expect the farmer to provide food and maintain the environment only at his/her own expense and labour.

The society has by and large failed to bring essential services to the farm gate. Credit, electricity, knowledge of new technology, implements which make farming more efficient,...

Where profit was to be made: seeds, agrochemicals, the commercial sector has stepped in. Not always this was beneficial to the farmer but successes are also seen and have to be acknowledged.

We all know that fertilizers and agrochemicals have been misused (especially by not so knowledgeable medium scale farmers), leading to imbalanced soil fertility (lack of micro nutrients), loss of organic matter in the soil (and with that loss of waterholding capacity), pesticide resistance.

I thus suggest that we start paying more for our food, lobby with our governments to provide essential services at the farm gate, assist the farmers to optimally use their resources before purchasing outside (LEISA) and promote that technologies are used in such a way that they improve the environment.

We do have examples of fairly large scale successes with this approach in Orissa where farming communities came from 3 months food security to surplusses within 2 years. These communities are now supporting other villages. The number of cattle has increased, new houses are build, farmers are now testing technologies. Small investments were required.