Here in the USA everything’s big, including farms. Out where I live if a farm’s not at least 1,000 acres it hardly counts. But that’s not true in much of the rest of the world. Where I’ve been traveling, a typical family farm is just one or two acres, maybe less. In Asia they use every square inch to grow food — mostly rice, some ducks and chickens, a few fruit trees, and a vegetable patch. Farmed intensively and carefully, a farm this size can produce enough to feed a small family. The academics call this “smallholder agriculture.” A newer term is “microfarming.” It is labor-intensive but low-energy-use, can be clean, low-cost, and highly efficient — and it just might hold the key to the future of food.

Microfarms in Bangladesh