Achieving SDG2 (zero hunger) in a situation of rapid global population growth requires a continued focus on food production. Farming not merely needs to sustainably produce nutritious diets, but should also provide livelihoods for farmers, while retaining natural ecosystems and services. Rather than focusing on production principles, this article explores the interrelations between farms and farming systems in the global food system. Evaluating farming systems around the world, we reveal a bewildering diversity. While family farms predominate, these range in size from less than 0.1 ha to more than 10,000 ha, and from hand hoe use to machine-based cultivation, enabling one person to plant more than 500 ha in a day. Yet, farming in different parts of the world is highly interdependent, not least because prices paid for farm produce are largely determined by global markets. Furthermore, the economic viability of farming is a problem, globally. We highlight trends in major regions of the world and explore possible trajectories for the future and ask: Who are the farmers of the future? Changing patterns of land ownership, rental and exchange mean that the concept of ‘what is a farm’ becomes increasingly fluid. Next to declining employment and rural depopulation, we also foresee more environmentally-friendly, less external input dependent, regionalised production systems. This may require the reversal of a global trend towards increasing specialisation to a recoupling of arable and livestock farming, not least for the resilience it provides. It might also require a slow-down or reversal of the widespread trend of scale enlargement in agriculture. Next to this trend of scale enlargement, small farms persist in Asia: consolidation of farms proceeds at a snail’s pace in South-east Asia and 70% of farms in India are ‘ultra-small’ – less than 0.05 ha. Also in Africa, where we find smallholder farms are much smaller than often assumed (< 1 ha), farming households are often food insecure. A raft of pro-poor policies and investments are needed to stimulate small-scale agriculture as part of a broader focus on rural development to address persistent poverty and hunger. Smallholder farms will remain an important source of food and income, and a social safety net in absence of alternative livelihood security. But with limited possibilities for smallholders to ‘step-up’, the agricultural engine of growth appears to be broken. Smallholder agriculture cannot deliver the rate of economic growth currently assumed by many policy initiatives in Africa.

Most food in sub-Saharan Africa is produced on small farms. Using large datasets from household surveys conducted across many countries, we find that the majority of farms are less than 1 ha, much smaller than previous estimates. Farms are larger in farming systems in drier climates. Through a detailed analysis of food self-sufficiency, food and nutrition security, and income among households from divergent farming systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, we reveal marked contrasts in food security and household incomes. In the south of Mali, where cotton is an important cash crop, almost all households are food secure, and almost half earn a living income. Yet, in a similar agroecological environment in northern Ghana, only 10% of households are food secure and none earn a living income. Surprisingly, the extent of food insecurity and poverty is almost as great in densely-populated locations in the Ethiopian and Tanzanian highlands that are characterised by much better soils and two cropping seasons a year. Where populations are less dense, such as in South-west Uganda, a larger proportion of the households are food self-sufficient and poverty is less prevalent. In densely-populated Central Malawi, a combination of a single cropping season a year and small farms results in a strong incidence of food insecurity and poverty. These examples reveal a strong interplay between population density, farm size, market access, and agroecological potential on food security and household incomes. Within each location, farm size is a major determinant of food self-sufficiency and a household’s ability to rise above the living income threshold. Closing yield gaps strongly increases the proportion of households that are food self-sufficient. Yet in four of the locations (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana and Malawi), land is so constraining that only 42–53% of households achieve food self-sufficiency, and even when yield gaps are closed only a small proportion of households can achieve a living income. While farming remains of central importance to household food security and income, our results help to explain why off-farm employment is a must for many. We discuss these results in relation to sub-Saharan Africa’s increasing population, likely agricultural expansion, and agriculture’s role in future economic development.