Small can be beautiful for organic market gardens: an exploration of the economic viability of French microfarms using MERLIN

Summary

Microfarms are commercial soil-based market gardens cultivating organic vegetables with less than 1.5 ha perfarmer in rural France. Microfarms typically grow crops in both outdoor and protected (tunnel) areas. Despitetheir growing popularity among young farmers with no agricultural background, there are no data on expectedincome generated by these small-scale farms. Our objective was to determine the economic viability generatedby a given agricultural area based on distinct microfarm scenarios. We used the stochastic model MERLIN tosimulate 18 microfarm scenarios combining three technical systems (varying with respect to the mechanizationlevel, use of commercial inputs, cropping density, and number of cropping cycles per year), two marketingstrategies (varying with respect to the length of the selling period and the range of crops grown), and threeinvestment hypotheses (varying with respect to the level of bank loans and the percentage of workload used forself-built equipment). Viability was calculated from the number of simulations that generated a selectedminimum monthly income (600, 1,000, or 1,400 Euro) for a maximum annual workload (1,800 or 2,500 h).This study shows that organic microfarms can be made economically viable in some cases but that the risks ofnot reaching viability in microfarms are not to be neglected. For microfarms, system redesign based on lowmechanization, higher cropping density, more cropping cycles per year, low-input practices, lower fixed costs,and lower initial investment (manual and bio-intensive system with tiller cultivation) was more favorable(meaning a higher modeled viability) than input substitution (classic system) at a small scale. A 9-month sellingperiod without winter storage crop cultivation led to higher viability than a 12-month selling period with winterstorage crop cultivation. Low-cost investment strategies based on self-built equipment and second-hand materialsled to lower viability than high-cost investment strategies that purchased equipment because the low-coststrategies increased the workload. Further research on microfarms should integrate other types of productionand activities, such as small-scale breeding and on-farm processing and examine in which extent collaborationsbetween microfarmers and larger scale farms could contribute to reshape farming systems and impact ruralcommunities beyond the gate of microfarms.