From its earliest days, small-scale farming has played the role of producing food for the people living nearby. This is still the case in a good number of countries on our planet, but the difficulties are increasing. In practice, whichever the country concerned, smallscale farmers are among the very poorest population groups. Their numbers are dwindling steadily, as is evident from the figures showing that, for the first time in human history, city-dwellers outnumbered their rural counterparts worldwide in 2007. The shift from traditional farmingto agribusiness is wreaking havoc in the countryside, in developed and developing countries alike. International trade is contributing to a relocation of the food production function to the countries with the lowest production costs.
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