Food Nutr J, an open access journal ISSN: 2575-7091 1 Volume 2018; Issue 03 Food & Nutrition Journal Review Article Niragira S, et al. Food Nutr J: FDNJ-175. Farm Size and Productivity Nexus Farmers’ Welfare in Burundi Sanctus Niragira 1* , Jan Brusselaers 1 , Jeroen Buysse 2 , Jos Van Orshoven 3 , Jean Ndimubandi 1 , Marijke D’Haese 2 1 Department of Rural Development, University of Burundi, Burundi 2 Department of Agricultural Economics, Ghent University, Belgium 3 Department of Earth & Environmental Science, University of Leuven, Belgium * Corresponding author: Sanctus Niragira, Department of Rural Development, University of Burundi, Burundi. Tel: +25771509242; Email: Niragsnctus@gmail.com Citation: Niragira S, Brusselaers J, Buysse J, Van Orshoven J, Ndimubandi J, et al. (2018) Farm Size and Productivity Nexus Farm- ers’ Welfare in Burundi. Food Nutr J: FDNJ-175. DOI: 10.29011/2575-7091. 100075 Received Date: 16 April, 2018; Accepted Date: 04 May, 2018; Published Date: 14 May, 2018 DOI: 10.29011/2575-7091. 100075 Abstract This paper presents an economic analysis of small-scale agricultural production effciency and household welfare in Bu- rundi. We used recent advances in data envelopment analysis (robust DEA) to generate standard and bootstrap-bias-corrected technical effciency scores for a nationwide sample of farms in the country. Next the correlation between these farm effciency scores and household poverty levels was checked. Finally, an instrumental variable approach was used to assess the link between household welfare and farm productivity. Findings highlight that smaller farms are more effcient than the larger farms. Yet, given their small size, this effciency level is not suffcient to raise the farm income above the poverty line which raises concerns about small farms’ viability. Most of them are too small and agriculture can no longer provide a realistic livelihood for the house- hold to earn a living. As a consequence, most of the land-constrained household are poor and food insecure despite their higher productivity. Both consumption and income appear as increasing functions of the farm size. As such, it is hard to appreciate how the inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity can strengthen nearly landless households or how liveli- hoods can be sustained in small scale farms of Burundi. Fundamental changes in the farming systems and agricultural policy are necessary to increase the scope for sustainable smallholder-led agriculture and its spill-over effects on the country’s economy. Keywords: Burundi; Effciency; Food Security; Landholdings; Small Scale; Welfare Introduction The potential of smallholder agriculture to create employment in rural areas, to generate income, and to contribute to household food security has been well documented in many developing countries [1,2]. Since 1964, when Schultz formulated the “poor-but-effcient” hypothesis, smallholder farmers attracted the attention of researchers, donors and decision makers alike. By agreeing that small-scale farmers are more rational, compared to the large landowners in allocating their scarce resources, improving the livelihoods of these households becomes a central aim of agriculture-led development. An impressive body of literature confrms that small-scale farms are effcient by showing an inverse relationship between farm size and yield [3,4]. Better effciency on small-scale farms is partly attributed to the abundant family labour per unit of land. Family workers are typically more motivated than hired workers and provide self-supervised high quality labour [5]. In addition, small farms achieve higher productivity with lower capital input compared to large farms, which is very important in countries where land and capital are scarce relatively to labour [6] and markets for credit and inputs are imperfect. Empirical evidence suggests that support to small farms should not only be motivated by effciency reasons but also because family farms are needed to maintain stability in the community, to secure sustainability of agricultural production and to stimulate local rural economic growth. Productive activities on small- scale farms as well as their labour mobilization, consumption patterns, ecological knowledge and common interests in long-term maintenance of the farm as a resource, contribute signifcantly to a stable and lasting local economy [7]. Smallholder farms contribute to reducing unemployment, provide a more equitable distribution of income and generate an effective demand for products and services from other sectors of the economy [8]. By spending substantial shares of the extra income on locally produced non- agricultural goods and services, they contribute to markets and