Lifestyle not a dirty word, says smallholder

Ian Grant

Good things come in small packages, says author Ian Grant, who has been running a small organic property with his wife, Diane, for more than 20 years.

Smallholdings, lifestyle blocks, mini-farms have been vilified at times in the past 40 years, often by "real" farmers concerned about good farming land being cut up for apparently unproductive use.

In some areas 50 acres (20ha) was the minimum size allowed for farmland and 10-acre (4ha) blocks were only allowed on land regarded as less desirable for farming, particularly cropping.

Grant runs a smallholding west of Masterton and recently published The Smallfarming Life, a history of smallfarming in New Zealand.

He argues that the back-to-the land movement has helped to repopulate rural regions and has been involved at the start of nearly every major diversification, except, perhaps, deer.

Small properties, which have sprung up in solid rings around cities and towns, have brought families, new crops and new livestock to the countryside.

Grant traces the evolution of the Association of Smallfarmers from the tail of the hippy era in 1977 through to this year, when it decided the sector had outgrown the association's original role in nurturing the diversity of small farms.

His book makes a case for smallholders putting more effort - on a weight-for-weight basis - into sustainability than many regular farmers and he has little time for complaints about a loss of productivity.

"... on average smallfarming has not been the poor use of land that has often been claimed," he says.

* The Smallfarming Life: NZ's Smallfarming Movement 1977-2006, by Ian F. Grant.

- NZPA