Impact of Contract Farming on the Economy of Potato Contract Farmers in Hooghly District of West Bengal : A Study on Empirical Literature

Abstract: Globalization has prompted a huge change in demand and supply of Agri processing industry. Convergence of taste and preferences at consumer level, dominance of big retail chains, and other related changes seek high level of certainty and standardization across the value chain. This leads to higher degree of corporatization of agriculture. Corporate for their own benefits recon-figured value chain and introduced contract farming to minimize the transaction costs in the supply chain. Initially it was introduced in developed countries and gradually travelled across the globe particularly to those developing countries which have institutional voids. In most of the developing countries, contribution of agriculture to GDP has been decreasing but at the same time agriculture caters the livelihood to the maximum number of people. Can contract farming change the situation? In order to answer that, it is important to understand the impact of contract farming on the economy of contract farmers along with the variables responsible for participation in contract farming