This study is a response to a request from those developing the Second Economy Strategy to help identify the key elements of an implementable programme to support the smallholder sector. At the core of the exercise was a set of case studies of ‘best practice’ – that is, of smallholders of various types in different places – the better to understand the factors that account for ‘smallholder success’, whether this be personal, contextual, institutional, etc. This report includes a brief overview of the smallholder sector and rural development policy (Chapter 2), an extensive literature review of different aspects of agricultural and smallholder policy (Chapter 3), a summary of the main empirical findings from the study (Chapters 4 and 5), and a presentation of main conclusions and recommendations (Chapter 6). In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we sketch some of the conceptual issues regarding what is meant by ‘smallholders’ and measures to support them, and then spell out the research questions that guided the study and the research methodology used to answer them. Finally, the companion volume consists of write-ups of the in-depth case studies.