Of all food consumed worldwide, 70 percent comes from small family farmers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In the Philippines, 88 percent of all farm holdings are under 3 hectares, with those under one hectare comprising the bulk (57 percent), based on the last Agricultural Census in 2012. What's remarkable is that our average farm size has shrunk from 2.84 hectares in 1980 to less than half of that (1.29 hectares) by 2012, as the number of farms jumped by 62.6 percent from 3.42 to 5.56 million. Clearly, partitioning of farms among offspring as they are passed on to the next generation is leading to increased farm fragmentation through time.