Certification benefits LSH practices aggregating economic value to its products, overcoming potential yield loss in situations which there is a yield penalty of non-intensive agriculture and increasing profits in situation in which there is no yield loss due to organic/agroforestry management. By and large, there appears to be a misunderstanding over the definitions of food security and agricultural production in the land-use debate arena. Global, national and regional food security means that a given nation should maximize production of agricultural goods on a per capita basis. Household and individual food security also encompasses individual nutritional standards, including hygiene education, clean water and sanitation .LSP is based on the idea that intensification increase food production, while LSH suggests that non-intensive farming may be also productive. Early studies have found that average organic-non organic yield ratio for 26 crops is 0.9, although more than half of milk products and beans had ratios graters than 1.0. Badgley et al.compared yield trends among developing and developed countries to find that most food categories had yield ratios slightly <0.1 in developed countries, while developing ones had ratios >0.1.

In turn, Seufert et al.suggest that the overall yield of intensive methods is higher than that of the organics, although the organic/intensive yield ratio is again very context-dependent. For fruits, this ratio is very close to one as predicted by LSH. Perennials and legumes, as well as staple crops, such as maize and soybeans, account for ~0.9 organic/intensive yields .Family farming is by far the most common form of agriculture in the world. FAO estimates that there are at least 570 million farms worldwide and that over 90% of them are family farms. The vast majority of family farms are small and about 94% of farms worldwide have less than 5ha, vertical rack system and even a large part of those have less than 2 hectares. One of the primary constraints in quantitative assessments is that small farms are frequently not detectable from official records and statistics. It is thus difficult to accurately quantify their number, distribution, production capacity and contribution to food availability. Small farms are regarded to produce more per land area and negative farm size-productivity relationship is long known by agriculturalists as well . Among the advantages of small farming are the multiple crop benefits, better output composition ; higher irrigation efficiency due to small area and proximity agricultural land to farm steads; and labor quality and intensity .

Small farms may also use more input per agricultural land, and resource use is more efficient in small individual or family agricultural areas. Although many small farms are in fact more intensive than the large scale counterparts, LSH is generally associated to small subsistence agroecological methods, while LSP is described to agribusiness companies and large land owners. Therefore, size of farms is extremely important when it comes to economy livelihoods and food security.Of particular interest to LSP and LSH debate is the view of the agricultural landscape as a system with inputs,outputs and externalities. Thus comparing outputs in isolation is not enough to distinguish the efficiency of intensive and non-intensive agriculture production. In general, intensive agriculture is associated with larger inputs and slightly more outputs,ensuing negative externalities. In turn, agro ecological management have lower inputs and lower outputs and results in positive ecological externalities . The efficiency of an agro ecological system is thus frequently higher , whereas intensive agricultural management is generally lower. Therefore, not only production but also efficiency is important.Critical factors, such as water scarcity, economic and climate change risks, make efficiency, not productivity,central in managing the agricultural landscape system.

LSP often assumes that agriculture production/efficiency and food security are linearly correlated, a perspective often criticized by LSH . The increasing use of agricultural land for producing bio-fuels along with food scarcity, low health conditions for the poor, food waste and over consumption make the relationship between agricultural production and food security complexly non-linear. Hence, not only increasing yields per capita,but also food accessibility has to be tackled to secure food especially for the poor.Food waste has also a large impact on food security. Globally, around 30% of the food is wasted . Of this,40% is lost in post-harvest procedures in under-developed countries and 40% is lost by retailers and consumers in industrialized countries.Over consumption is another problem, entailing health issues as well as decreases in food availability for others.Obesity, although historically associated to wealthy nations, is becoming a problem worldwide. Additionally,the expansion of biofuels or biomass production consumes large tracts of lands that could be used for growing crops, further increasing food insecurity .Therefore, two basics gaps must be bridged to achieve individual and household food security: the potential and realized yield/efficiency gap and the production-individual food security gap.