In Support of Conservation Agriculture for Smallholder Farmers

摘要

I have been farming for 35 years and currently manage or operate farms in Arizona, Illinois, Nebraska and South Africa totaling more than 14,000 acres. Farming seems to be the only profession where others think they know how to farm better than farmers. I would never presume to tell a banker how to collateralize a loan or a scientist how to develop a peer-review study, yet I have observed everyone from bankers, politicians, bureaucrats and academics tell farmers how they should farm. Their advice is usually derived from books, small research plots, extrapolations or philosophical revelations about what will work and what will fail for farmers. As a result, billions of development dollars have been misguided.