60 percent of the world's agriculture is in the hand of smallholders, who now number 500 million and support 2 billion people. Speaking at the ICT for Agriculture Conference 2013, Michael Nkonu, Agriculture programme specialist for the GSM Association says that most of these small operators have farms smaller than 2 hectares. Africa is also faced by inefficiency challenges, where cereal production per hectare was 2.4 tonnes compared to 4 tonnes per hectare for the rest of the world.
Challenges faced by these small operators include include globalisation which leads to more efficient producers competing with the small operators and climate change that has led to a decrease in production. Phil Abrahams, Strategic Business Development Director at CAB International says that other issues faced by farmers include productivity, prosperity and quality of life.
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