Twenty-five years of Living Under Contract: Contract farming and agrarian change in the developing world

The expansion of contract farming schemes through regions of the developing world in the era of the globalization of agriculture raises questions that are central to the study of agrarian political economy. Contract farming has extended the footprint of commodity production and integrated land and labour not otherwise captured in forms of direct production and marketing. 25 years after the publication of Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, a foundational collection edited by Peter Little and Michael Watts, it is necessary to take stock of the most prominent developments in the practice of contract farming and in the political economy literature studying it. The ultimate contribution of Living Under Contract was framing contract farming as expressing the unevenness of power relations in agriculture and grounding it in specific political, historical and social contexts that were not examined in the mainstream accounts. This introduction to the special issue revisits the questions that have remained relevant or re-emerged in the political economy literature on contract farming; it raises new questions that reflect contemporary developments and it explains how the papers in this collection contribute to the expansion of the theoretical and empirical horizons of the research on contemporary contract farming in low and middle-income countries.     

The fragmented politics of sugarcane contract farming in Uganda

In the last decade, contract farming has regained momentum among policymakers and global development agencies as a tool to promote inclusive rural development and responsible investments. Integrating smallholders within global, regional and national agricultural value chains, we are told, represents the sine qua non for alleviating rural poverty. In Uganda, under the label of out-grower schemes, contract farming is currently undergoing massive expansion, driven especially by the boom in sugarcane cultivation. Drawing from three case studies of sugarcane contract farming in Uganda, the paper re-politicizes the debate around contract farming by looking at the power relations within which these schemes are embedded. We argue, what is seen in Uganda's expansion is a political dynamic derived both from the major dislocations and dispossessions required to establish the plantation estate and its work force, as well as from the effort to bring many smallholders using unimproved methods on land with sometimes unclear tenure arrangements into contracted arrangements for supplying sugarcane. The result has been highly contentious politics around sugar's expansion, where struggles over land dispossession merge with those around exploitative wage labour, around the loss and transformation of livelihoods, and around debt, power inequalities and environmental harm, a matrix in which state violence and co-optation are ever-present.     

Living under value chains: The new distributive contract and arguments about unequal bargaining power

In the 1980s and 1990s, during the high-water mark of Washington Consensus development, rural sociologists and geographers critical of contract farming described contract as a legal fiction—one that imagines formally equal and voluntary relations between large firms and small farmers and hence that functions purposefully to obscure unequal social relations. Today, however, development planners, who argue for contract farming as an integral part of value chain agriculture, describe unequal bargaining power as a problem for rural development to solve. Our article analyzes how proponents have domesticated what was once a radical critique of contract farming—a phenomenon that we suggest tells of value chain development more broadly. Via a qualitative case study of India, we describe how a range of actors—development planners, state officials, and farmers—now all make arguments about unequal bargaining power and yet hold disparate understandings of what bargaining inequalities mean and what reforms should therefore follow. More specifically, we show how and why common reform proposals—for contract regulation and farmer aggregation—remain constrained by the inequalities they would challenge and thus why farmers themselves speak different possibilities to the problem of unequal bargaining power.     

Redefining rural prosperity through social learning in the cooperative sector: 25 years of experience from organic agriculture in Spain

In the political system and in public perception, the well-functioning of economy is frequently equalled to the output of the national economic system. However, during the last decades, this narrow conception of economic prosperity started to erode. This paper is based on a rural prosperity conceptual framework that takes into account the systemic nature and dynamics of interactions and impacts within rural systems through the analysis of an organic agriculture cooperative called Camposeven in the south east of Spain. The focus is on rural prosperity, differences in understanding, related parameters and strategies used by the cooperativés farming partners to success without following the traditional conventions of economic growth and farm-efficiency. Experience lessons in this paper demonstrate that the “technical-economic” approach of rural prosperity is not sufficient and results emphasize the important role of individuals’ behaviour as well as the contexts in which they are involved. The findings point to the increasing relevance of expanding both the theory and practice of rural prosperity approaches in sustainable rural development. This is important in order to enrich the connections between rural prosperity and other concepts such as social capital, innovation, social learning and resilience.     

What kind of labour regime is contract farming? Contracting and sharecropping in Java compared

This article compares contract farming with share tenancy, another labour regime in which smallholder farmers are bound by contract to deliver produce to another, usually more powerful party. Based on research in the Javanese village of Kaliloro, we explore contracting and sharecropping as labour regimes, each with their own specific mechanisms of surplus transfer from producers to non-producers. The cases compared are sharecropping of irrigated rice, contract farming of watermelon, and contract farming of poultry. There are important differences in how labour inputs are organized, how decisions are made, how costs are divided between landowner/contractor and farmer, and in the mechanisms of surplus transfer between the contracting parties. Exploring these differences allows us to understand and compare the role of the two labour regimes in the penetration of capital into the rural economy. Neither contract farming nor share tenancy are in themselves “win-win” or “win-lose” relationships, good or bad for small-scale cultivators. The actual balance of burdens and benefits—often contravening the provisions of written contracts or state regulation—is determined by power relations between the contracting parties.     

Potatoes,Petty Commodity Producers and Livelihoods: Contract farming and agrarian change in Maharashtra,India

This paper explores the implications of contract farming for patterns of agrarian change in India. The paper draws on a detailed analysis of primary qualitative data from a case study of potato contract farming in the state of Maharashtra. It argues that debates on contract farming are often ideological in nature, leading to overly simplified narratives of “win–win” or “win–lose.” Instead, by combining the strengths of agrarian political economy and rural livelihood analysis, the paper offers a concrete exploration of the intersections between contract farming, livelihoods, and agrarian change. It finds that contract farming activities in the case study villages are focused on a group of petty commodity producers. However, rather than sparking dynamic new processes of accumulation among contract farmers or leading to new forms of exploitation, the paper argues that contract farming is contributing to processes of agrarian change “already under way.” These processes are intimately connected to livelihood diversification and the struggles of new classes of fragmented labour.     

Tobacco,contract farming,and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

The growth of smallholder tobacco production since 2000 has been one of the big stories of Zimbabwe's post–land reform experience. Yet the implications for agrarian change, and the consequences for new relations between farmers, the state, and agribusiness capital have rarely been discussed. The paper reports on work carried out in the Mvurwi area of Mazowe district in Zimbabwe with a sample of 220 A1 (smallholder) farmers and 100 former farmworkers resident in compounds on the same farms. By going beyond a focus on operational and business dimensions of contract farming, the paper concludes with reflections on the implications for understanding agrarian relations and social differentiation in those areas of Zimbabwe where tobacco growing is now significant, with lessons more broadly on the political economy of contract farming, and the integration of agribusiness capital following land reform.     

农村电子商务发展与农村富余劳动力安置问题研究

随着中国城镇化进程不断推进,农村现代化加速运行,尤其是中国农村土地制度产生了重大的变革,中国农村需要面对的剩余劳动力转移与安置问题愈发严重。怎么将这些劳动力从农业转移到其它生产部门,在安置劳动力保证社会平稳过渡的同时,实现农村经济长期可持续发展,是我国在实现农业现代化与新型城市化中必须要解决的问题。文章为研究我国的富余劳动力安置问题,从中国农村土地流转改革与新型城镇化发展这一重要现实背景出发,分析目前与未来中国产生大量农村富余劳动力的转移安置与可持续发展的前景,在产业不断优化转移的大趋势下以农村电商的发展为突破口,从目前我国农村电子商务的现状、问题以及农村电商的发展出路进行了分析,得出农村电商将成为中国农村剩余劳动力的重要安置路径之一。     

African Perspectives on China–Africa: Modelling Popular Perceptions and their Economic and Political Determinants

China's recent political and economic inroads into Africa have generated much interest in the current literature, with scholars and policymakers endeavouring to assess the merits and risks implicit in this renewed engagement. Absent from the literature, however, are systematic analyses of African perceptions of these rapidly growing China–Africa links, and what determines these perceptions. This article fills this void by examining not only African attitudes towards China's African presence, but also investigating the considerations that inform these views. Using multi-level modelling techniques, this article estimates the effects of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI), Sino-African trade and notions of democracy and human rights on African attitudes towards “China-in-Africa”. The results suggest that Africans' views of China are nearly equivalent to those that they hold vis-à-vis Western countries. The perceived impact of imports from China has a negative effect. However, this effect is counter-balanced by perceptions of China's impact on poverty alleviation—in line with its greater focus on economic, social and cultural, as opposed to civic and political human rights—in particular through FDI. Among those who value civic and political human rights, in contrast, attitudes towards China are less favourable. This finding is echoed with respect to democratic governance, though the effect is less stable. The results are derived from Afrobarometer data covering 20 African countries.     

Land and contract farming: Changes in the distribution and meanings of land in Kilombero,Tanzania

In the context of contract farming of sugarcane in an outgrower scheme in Tanzania, this paper explores how the scheme has fundamentally altered people's relationships with the land over the last 50 years, in particular, since 1999, when, after three decades, the sugar parastatal was privatized. The paper reviews the literature on the mutual relationship between contract farming and land ownership and examines the scheme with a focus on long-term changes in the forms of land acquisitions and land use. We argue that the meaning and importance of landownership in contract farming schemes needs to be reassessed if participation in contract farming entails a departure from previous forms of acquiring land, generates new spatial patterns of agricultural production, and necessitates additional economic and social resources in order to transform land into an economic asset.     

Does carbon farming provide a cost‐effective option to mitigate GHG emissions? Evidence from China

In this study, we apply a whole farm bioeconomic analysis to explore the changes in land use, farm practices and on‐farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emission under varying levels of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement incentives in the form of a carbon tax for a semi‐arid crop‐livestock farming system in China's Loess Plateau. Our results show that the optimised agricultural enterprises move towards being cropping‐dominated reducing on‐farm emission since livestock perform is the major source of emission. Farmers employ less oats‐based and rapeseed‐based rotations but more dry pea‐based rotations in the optimal enterprise mix. A substantial reduction in on‐farm greenhouse gas emission can be achieved at low cost with a small increase in carbon incentives. Our estimates indicate that crop‐livestock farmers in China's Loess Plateau may reduce their on‐farm GHG emission between 16.6 and 33 per cent with marginal abatement costs <￥100/t CO₂e and ￥150/t CO₂e in 2015 Chinese Yuan. The analysis implies that reducing greenhouse gas emission in China's semi‐arid crop‐livestock agriculture is potentially a low‐cost option.     

Contract teachers and student achievement in rural China: evidence from class fixed effects

For schooling to play an important role in the development of human capital, the system of education needs to provide quality education, which among other things requires high‐quality teachers. Facing fiscal constraints and growing enrolments, school systems in developing countries often supplement their teaching staff by hiring contract teachers. However, there is limited evidence on how the effectiveness of these teachers compares to that of civil service teachers. We use a dataset from rural primary schools in western China to estimate the causal effect of contract teachers on student achievement and find that gains in student scores on standardised examinations in mathematics and Chinese are less in classes taught by contract teachers than in classes taught by civil service teachers. The results demonstrate that China's education system needs to focus on producing high‐quality teachers to improve the quality of schooling in its rural education system. The findings imply that educators in developing countries should not only seek to hire increasingly more civil service teachers in rural schools, but they should also identify ways of improving the quality of contract teachers. If efforts to improve teaching can succeed, rural students can learn more, earn higher incomes and contribute more to the productivity of the overall economy.     

后新冠疫情下我国农业农村数字经济发展问题、趋势与对策

目的 随着互联网与大数据的发展,我国数字经济融合技术、经济和产业于一体,有力助推供给侧结构性改革,同时也为防控疫情、保障经济社会各方面的有效运转提供有力支撑,但在非网民规模巨大的农村地区,数字经济发展相对滞后。在此次新冠疫情冲击之后,数字经济在促进农村劳动者就业、推动农业农村产业转型升级等方面将发挥重要作用。为了进一步优化农业生产结构和农村区域布局,文章主要围绕我国农业农村如何更好地应对疫情对农产品供应链体系带来的挑战,以及疫情后农业农村数字经济的加快发展等一系列问题展开探讨。方法 运用文献研究法,通过调查与农村农业数字经济相关的文献和数据获得研究资料,从而全面地、正确地了解新冠疫情对农业农村的影响。结果 该文在分析农业农村数字经济发展机遇及存在问题的基础上,探讨疫情后农业农村数字经济的发展趋势：（1）农业农村数字经济由增量向增质转变;（2）农业农村数字经济由供给端向需求端转变;（3）农业农村数字经济由单一向多元发展转变;（4）农业农村数字经济由自由分散经营向规范化与规模化转变。结论 在此基础上,提出促进我国农业农村数字经济平稳快速发展的主要建议：（1）保证农业农村数字经济基础设施高水平供给;（2）重视物流配送、商流组织等“软”性要素;（3）大力推进数字技术与农业农村的深度融合;（4）加强农业农村数字经济领域的人才培养;（5）加强农业农村数字经济法律法规建设。农业农村可以通过数字化技术克服空间障碍,为更多的消费者提供服务,使数字经济成为农村农业升级的强大动力。     

The Spanish path of agrarian change, 1950–2005: From authoritarian to export‐oriented productivism

The aim of this study is to determine whether the evolution of Spain's agrarian change, between 1950 and 2005, exhibits any features important enough to differentiate it from the common model of developed countries in Western Europe. On the one hand, the Spanish agrarian transformations share the main features of the changes in Western Europe: technological innovation, increased production and productivity, the diminishing importance of the agricultural sector, close integration with the industrial sector, and a high environmental impact. On the other hand, a series of important peculiarities can be observed in Spain's agrarian change: strong expansion of intensive livestock farming; the role of increased irrigation in explaining the transformation of agriculture; policies that offered very little support to the agricultural sector under a dictatorship that denied a voice to farmers; and the prominent role of agriculture in the economy despite its small contribution to GDP.     

大兴安岭森林火烧对土壤生境质量影响研究

森林火烧是一种自然或人为因素产生的干扰,能够改变当地土壤的物理性质、化学性质及生物指标,对土壤的性质与土壤的肥力影响较大,对农业生态系统的结构与功能影响深远。作为我国重点的国有林区,大兴安岭地区林地面积广阔,森林覆盖率高,是我国生态安全的重要保障区,拥有丰富的林业资源,林下适生农业经济作物有500多种,林木、柞蚕、林果及中草药等绿色种养产业的资源十分丰富,是当前大兴安岭发展现代农业的主要模式。大兴安岭是我国森林火灾的多发区,文章对近年来国内专家学者对火烧影响森林土壤的理化性质与生物指标等众多研究成果进行综合评述,近年来,研究者从大兴安岭不同地区、不同林火种类与林火强度系统分析并研究了火烧对土壤生境质量的影响,该文通过对其进行归纳总结,旨在为该地区的火烧迹地植被恢复及农业林下经济的科学经营管理提供科学依据。     

“Effectively organic”: Environmental gains on conventional farms through the market?

Qualitative field research in England identified a cohort of farmers practicing what they self-defined as ‘effectively organic’ or ‘semi-organic’ farming. Utilising Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour as a framework for analysis, reducing inputs was found to be primarily a response to financial pressures, also reflected in changing substantive norms towards balancing risks and potential returns against investment, rather than optimising production. However, despite the apparent ease of converting to organic farming from low input practice, formal conversion to organic farming was not found to be the automatic outcome of this trajectory: instead, organic farming was identified as only one of a number of options for increasing the financial viability of the farming operation, which included other niche markets, pluriactivity and contracting land to and from other farmers. The affiliation of low input farmers with organic production denotes positive attitudes towards both organic farming and environmental practices, but a lack of understanding about organic farming techniques. The author argues that due to declining returns/input ratios, future conversion to organic farming may reflect the value placed on other aspects of organic production, such as increased labour, risk reduction and environmental ideals, and highlights the environmental implications of the ongoing ‘cost price squeeze’ on farming households.     

Private and state-led contract farming in Zimbabwe: Accumulation,social differentiation and rural politics

Contract farming schemes often amplify existing patterns of socio-economic differentiation. In Zimbabwe, processes of differentiation were underway before the current expansion of contract farming and they have deepened through the Fast Track Land Reform process. This article examines how pre-existing dynamics of differentiation shape the forms of contract farming adopted, as well as which groups of farmers gain access and on what terms. Social differentiation partly explains the outcomes of contract farming, even if contract farming in turn results in further differentiation. This article contrasts private sector-led contract farming of tobacco and state-led financing of maize production (the ‘command agriculture’ programme) in two high-potential sites and across different forms of land use. Unlike in many other settings, contract farming in Zimbabwe is highly influenced by the state, through the regulation of private sector arrangements and the establishment of a state-led contracting programme. The state-led programme boosted maize production amongst medium-scale farmers and resulted in an embedding of patronage relations. Meanwhile, the private-led contract farming has supported a widespread boom of tobacco production, mainly amongst smallholders. We find therefore that contract farming is highly dependent on the contingent, politically mediated processes of social differentiation.     

中国省域农业现代化水平评价及其影响因素的空间计量分析

[目的]对各地区农业现代化的评价以及其影响因素的分析有利于各地区把握自身的农业现代化水平并制定相应的改革措施。[方法]文章在文献分析的基础上确定了农业现代化评价的4个维度、13个指标,然后运用熵权TOPSIS法对我国部分省域2008~2015年的农业现代化水平进行量化评价,最后结合空间计量分析进行实证研究。[结果]得到了我国农业现代化分布的空间格局,并对农业现代化发展与产业结构、基础建设、农业固定资产投入之间的关系进行了检验。[结论]我国农业现代化发展呈现较强的空间集聚性,我国东部地区、中部地区、西藏、新疆地区的农业现代化程度较高,西部地区,特别是中西部交接地带的农业现代化程度较低,人均固定资产投入以及基础设施建设对农业现代化发展有显著正影响,不能盲目追求降低第一产业比重等结论,并从区域政策支持、农业示范中心城市的设立、产业结构、固定资产投入、基础设施建设等方面为我国的农业发展提供政策建议。     

Contract Farming in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Survey of Approaches,Debates and Issues

The paper provides a selective survey of the most significant literature on the rise of contract farming in developing countries, with a focus on sub‐Saharan Africa. The review of the literature illustrates ideological debates around the meaning and significance of contract farming and whether it is good or bad for small‐scale farmers. The paper then divides the review of the literature into three key themes. First, it addresses the quantitative significance of contract farming in Africa, which may not be as important as it is often portrayed. Second, the paper highlights the substantial diversity of contract farming in Africa and problems with excessive generalizations. Third, it discusses the various drivers fuelling the spread of contract farming, which reflect new production conditions and existing constraints, tendencies and counter‐tendencies, and both economic and political responses to changes in production and market conditions in the era of liberalization and globalization. The variety of drivers is substantial and defies generalizations about the emergence of contract farming. Finally, it briefly suggests research questions that tend to be absent in most of the literature on contract farming, and which are important in order to understand the current dynamics of agrarian change and transitions to capitalism in African countries.     

牢牢抓住建设智慧农业的时代主题

目的 当前，以信息技术和生物技术为特征的新一轮农业科技革命正在孕育大的突破，信息化进入到大数据发展的新阶段，并与农业农村现代化形成了历史性交汇。通过界定智慧农业及相关重要概念，探索大数据、物联网、人工智能等现代信息技术在农业生产各环节、各领域的创新应用。方法 文章对建设智慧农业的技术演进、现实需求、发展趋势进行研究，将文献、统计数据、调研案例分析结果相结合，提出智慧农业建设和数字乡村发展路径。结果 建设智慧农业是技术进步的必然产物，是乡村振兴的应势而为，数字技术正在破解“谁来种地、怎么种地”的问题，改变“面朝黄土背朝天”的劳作方式，让“知天而作”的智慧农业逐步变为现实。结论 要着力建设数据资源体系，以企业为主体、多方协同开展科技攻关，探索应用场景，加强数字技术在农业农村各行业各领域的集成应用，聚焦重点品种、重点地区、重点领域和重点方向抓好试点示范，支撑中国走出一条不同于欧美发达国家大规模大机械的农业现代化道路。