Contract farming

Contract farming is an arrangement in which buyers request farmers to provide agricultural goods under contract, as opposed to procuring these in spot markets. This chapter provides an introduction to contract farming and explains its significance and considerable expansion in contemporary agriculture. The chapter examines the contributions of mainstream agricultural economics and critical agrarian studies to research on contract farming emphasising the different research questions asked and the unevenness of empirical evidence provided in these contrasting perspectives. It is argued that contract farming operates in a field of social relations and cannot be accounted for in terms of the relation between buyers and producers alone, as is characteristic of mainstream approaches. In contrast, critical agrarian studies focus on the social relations of power, production and property at village, region and global scales and the class, gendered and generational conflicts and tensions that characterise commodity production through contract farming.