ABSTRACT
Smallholder farmers are critical to global soil health and food production. Lowder et al. (2016) estimated that smallholders account for 97% of all farms, but control less than 30% of the global farmland. Smallholder farmers also have an important contribution to the global production of food for human consumption. It is estimated that over 50% of all food calories produced are grown in smallholder systems (Samberg et al., 2016). However, their presence is not uniformly distributed. Smallholder farmers are concentrated in regions with high vulnerability to soil health degradation and poverty; lower-income tropical East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (Fig. 1). Geographically, the areas of highest smallholder farmer density also correspond to the hot spots of global poverty. The lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers are intimately linked to soil health. Empowering smallholder farmers to maintain soil health is a critical tool in the fight against poverty (Sanchez, 2002).
