2.3 The productivity, efficiency, and resiliency of peasant
agriculture
Proponents of the Green Revolution and other modernization
schemes assume progress and achieving development
in traditional agroecosystems as inevitably requiring the
replacement of local crop varieties for improved ones, and
that the economic and technological integration of traditional
farming systems into the global system is a positive step
that enables increased production, income, and commonly
well-being. Although the conventional wisdom is that small
family farms are backward and unproductive and that peasant
agriculture generally lacks the potential of producing
meaningful marketable surplus, it does ensure food security.
Many scientists wrongly believe that traditional systems do
not produce more because hand tools and draft animals put a
ceiling on productivity. Productivity may be low but the
causes appear to be more social, not technical. When the
subsistence farmer succeeds in providing food, there is no
pressure to innovate or to enhance yields (Rosset 1999;
Altieri 2002).