Governments and international organisations frequently stress that small farmers control the largest share of the world’s agricultural land. But a new review of data carried out by GRAIN, an international non-profit organisation, reveals that small-scale farmers are now squeezed onto a quarter of the world’s farmland - or just 17%, if farms in India and China are excluded. With the launch of 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) acknowledged the importance of small farms and announced that family farms work 70% of the farmland. According to GRAIN, however, this contradicts the experience with small farms around the world since corporate farms, big biofuel operations and land speculators are pushing millions off their land. “We are fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN. “The overwhelming majority of farming families today have less than two hectares to cultivate and that share is shrinking. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.” The report used official statistics from national agricultural census bureaus wherever possible, complemented by FAO's statistical database and other sources. To define what a “small farm” is, they mostly used the definition by each national authority, since the size of small farms in different countries varies widely. The report confirmed that over 90% of all farms in the world today are small, holding on average 2.2 hectares, and that they are still getting smaller. Despite this, they produce most of the world’s food and are often much more productive than large corporate farms. If all farms in Kenya matched the output of its small farms, the nation’s agricultural productivity would double and in Central America, it would nearly triple, the report found. Women are the major food producers, but their role remains unrecorded and marginalised. GRAIN’s conclusion is that “We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems.”