Development Dialogues: What does the future hold for small farms in Africa?

Mukeshimana reflects on her tenure as Rwanda’s Agriculture Minister, where even farms as small as 0.4 hectares made up 90% of national food production and 30% of exports. She notes the critical importance of a systems-wide approach.

“There is no single magic bullet in this landscape of smallholder agriculture.” - Gérardine Mukeshimana

Rwanda’s success hinged on end-to-end reforms—from research and digital tools to market integration and risk mitigation. However, she acknowledges the challenges.

“One of the challenges… is the size of the plot. That’s really small. The second is the access to finance.” - Gérardine Mukeshimana

While small farms are viable, they must be better supported through investment, policy, and infrastructure.

Rosenzweig presents a bold thesis: farm size itself may be the fundamental bottleneck.

“The economies of scale from mechanization are enormous, so they're unexploited, so we have slack resources and unexploited scale economies from small farms.” - Mark Rosenzweig

In simulations conducted in India, increasing average farm size from two to 25 acres led to a 42% rise in output and 68% increase in income per worker.

He outlines three reasons why small scale impedes productivity:

1. Labor underutilization and misallocation due to high transaction costs.
2. A lack of mechanization, which is infeasible on tiny plots.
3. Absence of functioning land and labor markets.

“In the history of the world, as far as I know, there has never been an aggrandizement from very small farms to large farms without external intervention on the part of government.” - Mark Rosenzweig

Udry offers a more cautious view, highlighting cultural and institutional barriers to land consolidation. In West Africa, for instance, individuals trying to accumulate land are unable to do so due to communal land tenure systems. He warns that reforming these systems risks undermining crucial social protection mechanisms. He also questions whether improved land rights alone will trigger consolidation.

“There’s a hold-up problem,” he explains, as fragmented ownership structures require impractical coordination. Instead, Udry proposes a focus on enabling gradual transformation through improved infrastructure and technology.

“In the short run, I think that there [are] many inefficiencies in agriculture in Africa that can be alleviated short of this agglomeration.” - Chis Udry

While farm size dominates the debate, the panelists agree it’s far from the only issue. Udry outlines a suite of constraints: poor roads, limited access to credit and insurance, weak market links, and inadequate labor markets. He underscores the diversity of African agriculture.

“There is strong evidence of an enormous amount of heterogeneity in the physical and economic environment that farmers are operating in.” - Chris Udry

For example, variation in maize yields across Ugandan farms can reach up to 10,000%, compared to just 200% in the US Midwest.

“This variation across farms in Africa means that different farmers need different types of inputs and they need to use them in different ways, which makes it more difficult to develop new technologies and to develop policies that increase productivity just because of the diversity of circumstances that farmers have.” - Chris Udry

Mukeshimana echoes this sentiment, arguing that success lies in bundling support.

As the discussion turns toward the future, the panelists consider what rural development should look like. Mukeshimana sees a clear role for smallholders in the near term, pointing out that they already provide almost 35% of the food that is consumed globally. For her, the focus must be on enabling current farmers to earn better livelihoods and reinvest in education and opportunity for the next generation.

Rosenzweig offers a vision of long-term transformation.

“What's very important for the productivity of agriculture, the production of food in the world is that there be industrialization in these countries.” - Mark Rosenzweig

He sees future farming dominated by fewer, more mechanized farms, with the majority of the population employed in non-agricultural sectors. However, he acknowledges this will require new pathways, such as collective farming models seen in China.

“There is an intermediate [solution]… collective farming… [where] firms come in and contract with a whole set of farmers owning adjacent land… which enormously increases output and incomes… without changing property rights.” - Mark Rosenzweig

In closing, each guest shares one change that could catalyze progress. Rosenzweig calls for shifting focus from short-term aid to long-term transformation.

“Focusing our attention to the bigger picture of how we're going to move people out of agriculture, instead of just fixing the idea that small farmers need help.” - Mark Rosenzweig

Udry calls for more research into context-specific technologies and locally feasible land aggregation strategies.

Mukeshimana insists that both investment and policy are crucial. She calls for a renewed emphasis on “inclusive rural development,” noting that the rural poor—especially smallholder farmers—risk being left behind without systemic change.

This episode of Development Dialogues surfaces a powerful tension in agricultural policy: the immediate needs of millions of small farmers versus the structural reforms required for long-term transformation. While experts disagree on the speed and mechanisms of change, they align on one point: inclusive, evidence-based policymaking is critical.

“There is no single country that implements only one policy… We need the right policies and strategies that are pro-people and that are looking at pulling people out of poverty.” - Gérardine Mukeshimana