Contract farming is typically seen as a useful mechanism to help smallholders. However, despite economic benefits, high dropout rates from contract schemes are commonplace. We use data from Ghana to show that smallholders benefit from a resource-providing contract in terms of higher yields and...

Contract farming recently gained in importance in many developing countries. Various studies analyzed effects of contracting on productivity and income in the small farm sector. A few studies also looked at effects on agricultural labor use, suggesting that contracting tends to increase labor...

The food retail sector in many developing countries is transforming with a rapid growth of modern supermarkets. Supermarkets are not only influencing how food is sold to consumers, but also how agricultural products are sourced from farmers. Especially for the procurement of fresh fruits and...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries often suffer from high risk and limited market access. Contract farming may improve the situation under certain conditions. Several studies analyzed effects of contracts on smallholder productivity and income with mixed results. Most existing studies...

1: Introduction and Rethinking Contract Farming -- 2: Punjab: An Interesting place to study Agrarian Change -- 3: Understanding the Social Relations of Contract Farming -- 4: Stating the (not so) obvious: The ‘Interventionist Neoliberal State’ in India -- 5: Understanding CF: CF as a...

"Debates about public expenditure in the agricultural sector have re-opened in many developing and emerging economies because of high budget deficits and changes in public opinion. As a result, agricultural policy in many of these countries is beginning to take a more market-oriented approach to...

This paper analyses the implication of contract farming on gender inequalities in rural Mozambique. Contract farming is often considered one of the major tools of agribusiness development: it broadly includes those arrangements under which producers commit to provide a pre-defined quantity of...

This book takes the reader through the expansion, restructuring and possible salvation of Malawi's main industry, tobacco. Malawi has been dependent on tobacco exports for a century, but now, with demand for Malawian tobacco declining fast, the country needs to diversify rapidly. The authors...

In the last decades global food value chains have seen the need for increasing vertical coordination in order to secure quality standards. A prominent way to govern the relationships between farmers and agri-business firms are farming contracts. We study the role of trust, risk and time...

Although there is a lot of evidence for the positive welfare effects of contract farming, it is not clear how to integrate farmers into contracts and how to maintain stable long-term-relationships between farmers and agri-business firms. While Contract Farming is a formal institutional...

The focus of this paper is the role played in rural contexts by contract farming agreements between smallholders and private investors. These contracts can take different forms, but in general are agreements under which producers commit to supply produce to a buyer firm. They are - at least on...

Large-scale agricultural investments, foreign direct investments, smallholder farmers, Tanzania, Malawi, outgrowers, agro-industry employment, spillovers, sugarcane, rice. - Großflächige Agrarinvestitionen, ausländische Direktinvestitionen, Großbetriebe, Vertragsanbau, landwirtschaftliche...

Through contract farming schemes between cohorts of farmers and private companies the Indonesian government intended to spur rural economic development. In particular within the oil palm sector, such community-company 'partnerships' are commonplace. Yet, empirical evidence of the success of...

This dissertation is an empirical investigation of the implications of the Indonesian oil palm sector for rural village communities located in Jambi province, on the island of Sumatra. It consists of three contributions to the scientific literature on land-use dynamics, economic development, and...

Marvin is a contract hog farmer in Iowa. He owns his land, his barn, his tractor, and his animal crates. He has seen profits drop steadily for the last twenty years and feels trapped. Josh is a dairy farmer on a cooperative in Massachusetts. He doesn't own his cows, his land, his seed, or even...

Linking small farmers to modern markets, whether domestically or for export, increasingly entails participation in modern supply chains coordinated by contract farming. Concerns have been raised regarding the possible disadvantages from contract farming facing small farmers. Most empirical work...

The indirect effects of biofuels are mostly considered negative. In this paper, we argue that there may be a positive indirect effect of biofuels on food security and poverty. Our analysis shows that the introduction of castor production for biofuel in a poor country as Ethiopia can...

With the rising demand for agricultural land, land deals must be designed to benefit not only the investors but also the local population. This paper looks at two ways this might be done for farmers in the vicinity of a large-scale oil palm investment in Ghana: contract farming and secure...

Contracts may be subject to strategic default, particularly if public enforcement institutions are weak. In a lab experiment, we study behavior in a contract farming game without third-party enforcement but with an external spot market as outside option. Two players, farmer and company, may...