Recently I had a conversation with someone who works in a primary industries agency. He said that the solution to climate change and peak oil in the agricultural sector was bigger farms. I asked him to explain as this runs counter to almost all work that is being done on peak oil and climate change adaptation and resilience. He said that larger farmers are not as financially marginal. Bigger farms (actually many farms owned by a single farmer or corporation) means more cash means more capacity to deal with failures caused by climate events and more cash to pay for increased fuel. The objective was business resilience - not resilience of the land, not food security, not even protection of rural communities - just make sure that the few remaining 'farmers' earn a quid.
This confirmed whispers and rumours that I'd heard from such agencies - but I'd never had it presented to me in such clear and frightening terms.
These are the folks that ensure that the entire food production system is genetically engineered, nano-packaged and preserved, doused in chemicals, over fertilised and producing vast industrial monocultures that are highly processed and carted all over the globe in service of poor health and an obscenely excessive meat eating addiction.
Rethinking food is long overdue.

The author seems to have forgotten the real problem here. For years
the EC and US have paid tens of billions of $ in subsidies to their
farmers, whose surplus production was then dumped on the third world,
often well below the cost of production. No wonder that other farmers
then went out of business!

Fact is that farmers of the world cannot compete with EC and US
treasuries, which is what has been the case for decades now.

Last years short spike in grain prices followed years of low
prices. Farmers around the globe won't grow things, if they
cannot make a profit doing so. Take away those huge subsidies
and global prices would be more in line with production costs,
third world farmers would be the first to benefit.

Yabby

"Farmers around the globe won't grow things, if they
cannot make a profit doing so. Take away those huge subsidies
and global prices would be more in line with production cost"

The trouble then would be that farmers in the first world would then not grow the required crops because they would not be able to make a profit. You are in a bit of a catch 22 situation. We need the food, and sooner or later, those in the first world are going to have to pay a decent price. In Australia in particular, our farmers have been getting paid a pittance for their produce and that combined with the current drought will force many of them to give up.

VK3AUU, that's because Australia doesn't have export subsidies. The only form of subsidies the Australian farmers receive are drought relief packages, which I'd argue can't be viewed in the same light given the precarious state of the Murray Darling.

Yabby's right. The EU and US subsidy packages are obscene and can't be justified morally or economically. Take Jose Fanjul for example:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/jose_fanjul/index.html
There's an assortment of articles there on the Fanjul brothers - one of America's largest welfare recipients, and their largest sugar producer.

That being said, I don't agree that this will solve everything. It will certainly help though.
I concur with the author that free market policy won't necessarily aid those in the third world - I for one, wouldn't blame third world countries, with significant numbers of starving people, to classify food production as an emergency security issue and create policies to ensure domestic distribution from farmers was a priority, thus rendering local farms more viable.

However, given the corrupt nature of many third world countries, such policies would inevitably be abused which is unfortunate - hence my belief that scrapping export subsidies would be a great first step.

Yabby and others are right – what free market in food? The USA, Japan and EU impose protectionism and subsidies that distort markets to the disadvantage of the world’s poor farmers, and consumers both rich and poor. Reducing these barriers would improve living standards and food security, not diminish them.

Food security isn’t attained through self-sufficiency, it’s attained by having access to alternative supplies when local sources fail, as they invariably do from time to time. That means having access to global markets and the resources to buy on them. The world’s poorest and least food-secure countries are also the ones where trade is a relatively small proportion of GDP.

The food price spikes of recent years have many and complex sources including unusually strong demand in China, drought, and market-distorting policies such as subsidising biofuels in developed countries. Prices have fallen significantly since mid 2008, alleviating the stress they undoubtedly put on some of the world’s poor.

The recent price strike is an exception to a general rule that, in the long term, agricultural and other commodities’ prices tend to fall relative to the prices of other goods and services.

If recent trend in global markets are bad for the poor, how is it that:

- for several decades, global food production has risen faster than global population, per capita consumption has risen, and the proportion of the world’s population suffering starvation and malnourishment has declined.

- The UN reports that it millennial goal target of reducing global poverty by half between 2000 and 2015 is on track

- Most of the progress in reducing poverty and hunger has been in countries in South and East Asia that have embraced globalisation and trade as the path to development

- There has been much less progress in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where governments have been suspicious of free trade.

http://www.undp.org/publications/MDG_Report_2008_En.pdf

There are still far too many hungry people and food-insecure countries. The solution to this is more of the types of policies that raise agricultural productivity – new technology, innovation, international investment and trade that allows specialisation and competition.

Here's a matter well worth considering:

China has 1.3 billion people. More than a seventh of the entire world population.
Yet, for many years, it's been a net producer. The country manages to produce enough food to feed its many many people.

There are clearly lessons to be learnt here.

Much of this has come from rural families having small plots of land to supplement their income and grow food for harvest, and burning such materials in winter for warmth.
The State retains freehold ownership and gives out long term leases.

In response to the adverse economic circumstances, the government is considering lengthening the duration of these leases which will spur larger farms and a higher degree of industry in the countryside.

I do worry however that larger farms will mean fewer plots available for individual families. This will create benefits in terms of profitability, but I worry about sustainability, given the success of the previous arrangement in terms of the sheer number of mouths being filled.