Small can be beautiful for organic market gardens: an exploration of the economic viability of French microfarms using MERLIN
Résumé
Microfarms are commercial soil-based market gardens cultivating organic vegetables with less than 1.5 ha per
farmer in rural France. Microfarms typically grow crops in both outdoor and protected (tunnel) areas. Despite
their growing popularity among young farmers with no agricultural background, there are no data on expected
income generated by these small-scale farms. Our objective was to determine the economic viability generated
by a given agricultural area based on distinct microfarm scenarios. We used the stochastic model MERLIN to
simulate 18 microfarm scenarios combining three technical systems (varying with respect to the mechanization
level, use of commercial inputs, cropping density, and number of cropping cycles per year), two marketing
strategies (varying with respect to the length of the selling period and the range of crops grown), and three
investment hypotheses (varying with respect to the level of bank loans and the percentage of workload used for
self-built equipment). Viability was calculated from the number of simulations that generated a selected
minimum 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 of
not reaching viability in microfarms are not to be neglected. For microfarms, system redesign based on low
mechanization, 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 selling
period without winter storage crop cultivation led to higher viability than a 12-month selling period with winter
storage crop cultivation. Low-cost investment strategies based on self-built equipment and second-hand materials
led to lower viability than high-cost investment strategies that purchased equipment because the low-cost
strategies increased the workload. Further research on microfarms should integrate other types of production
and activities, such as small-scale breeding and on-farm processing and examine in which extent collaborations
between microfarmers and larger scale farms could contribute to reshape farming systems and impact rural
communities beyond the gate of microfarms.
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