Small-Scale Farming: A Review of Challenges and Potential Opportunities Offered by Technological Advancements

Abstract

Smallholder farmers play an important role in ensuring world food security. In addition to food security, small-scale farming also provides numerous other direct and indirect environmental, social, cultural, and economic benefits by improving crop diversification, job security, and self-sufficiency. However, small-scale agriculture faces several challenges which are further exacerbated by climate change, population increase, water scarcity, and soil degradation. Agriculture has seen a lot of technological advancements in the last few decades. However, access to these advancements has not always been economically viable for small or medium farm operations. This article aimed to review the major barriers to small-scale farming and to review the status and potential opportunities offered by advanced technologies that can benefit small-scale holders. Based on the review, we found that economics, marketing, climate change, lack of awareness, educational resources, infrastructure, information, and technology are the major challenges to small-scale farming. Technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the IoT (internet of things), irrigation automation, and the use of smartphones are already becoming mainstream in small-scale farming and other technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), yield monitoring, and food traceability have potential opportunities to solve the challenges that hamper the success of small-scale growers.