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.     

European Agriculture in Transition

The uncertainties facing European agriculture have rarely been greater. The combination of the Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the agricultural negotiations in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the impact on agricultural trade of the liberalisation of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies produce a greater set of challenges than at any other time this century. These three sets of issues have four features in common. First, they are all of such a scale that they could have signifcant effects on the economic circumstances facing European farmers. Second, they are intensely political and thus the outcome is extremely difficult to predict. Third, they all involve processes which will span several years, they are not once-off events. Fourth, they all move in the direction of increasing competitive pressures on West European agriculture. The paper proceeds in four parts. Parts one to three summarise the main components of each of the three issues and the scale and timetable of the changes they may bring about. The fourth part contains a discussion of the interactions between the three issues and assessment of the direction and magnitude of the effects of the changes. Anticipating the conclusions, imagine agriculture in the EC (and, mutatis mutandi, EFTA) as a basket of sikworm cocoons! Our farmers have already been through several stages of their metamorphosis. Having gorged themselves for decades on the mulberry leaves of taxpayer-provided subsidies, they are now cosily embraced in the tangled and extremely protective web of the CAP. For sound internal and external reasons, this protective shield of silk is being unwound. The result will be an industry which is more exposed to the elements. The environment facing farmers will be less certain, more variable, there will be more competition and less protection against predators. Many of the moths will not survive the harsh climate outside the cocoon. Equally, however the larger, better nourished and fitter ones will make it. They will ensure the survival of the species. But as is often the case in nature, many may perish in order that the rest survive. It is also likely to be the case that fewer of those who care for and supply to the silkworms will be required for this smaller, stronger, more productive surviving population.     

A detailed greenhouse gas budget for palm oil production

We have evaluated the global warming impact of palm oil production in a model that simulates the operations of a typical palm oil mill that processes fruit from a nucleus estate and outgrowers. It estimates carbon sequestration in the crop and in mill products and by-products, and balances this against the major sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs), all converted to carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂-e) over the 25-year lifespan of the crop. The model shows that most carbon sequestration occurs in the standing crop, with smaller amounts in mill products and by-products. Land-use conversion plays a dominant role in the GHG budget, with planting of oil palm after logged forest or rubber leading to a net loss of carbon, and to a net gain following grassland. In the default oil-palm-to-oil-palm case the carbon lost from cleared palms is balanced by sequestration in the current crop. Methane from mill effluent and nitrous oxide from N fertilizers are the next most important emission sources. The default replant case gives net emissions of 0.86t CO₂-e per t crude palm oil, but these can be reduced to very low values, mainly through conversion of methane and surplus fuel in the mill to energy.     

Multi-year assessment of Unilever's progress towards agricultural sustainability II: outcomes for peas (UK), spinach (Germany,Italy), tomatoes (Australia,Brazil, Greece,USA), tea (Kenya,Tanzania, India) and oil palm (Ghana)

The foods, home and personal care company, Unilever, is a large user of raw materials from agriculture, and a major buyer of goods on world markets. The continued supply of these materials is seen as an important component in the business's long-term success. The company has a long history of seeking to farm responsibly on company farms and for directly contracted raw materials, but it became clear that an approach based solely on suppliers' good agricultural practice would not safeguard supplies where increasing social and environmental pressures on agriculture were growing, or where increasing consumer concerns about the food chain could undermine markets and brands. Both threats suggested the need for a more radical approach. This resulted in the development of a mission statement, the agreement of four principles for sustainable agriculture, the identification of ten sustainable agriculture indicators (later 11), and the selection of five key crops the sustainable supply of which was significant to the company.

This paper summarizes progress towards the sustainable supply of these crops by reporting on selected sustainability indicators for the crops (peas, spinach, tomatoes, tea and oil palm) in 11 countries. Some of the businesses using these products have been subsequently sold, but these are reported here because the aim is to explore how responsive are different indicators of sustainability to management action in different crops in widely differing locations. This paper focuses on a selection of findings for each of the 10 indicators, in order to illustrate the extent of changes that have been observed over time. These also indicate some of the difficulties faced in making improvements on the ground. The gathering of data on sustainability indicators is closely tied to the development of alternative practices that should quickly deliver improvements in a variety of outcomes. An assessment is also made of the key changes that have occurred for each of the main five crops as a result of adopting the sustainability indicator system and associated new management practices.

Multi-year assessments were conceived as the way to understand and demonstrate progress towards more sustainable agriculture. The important developments were of systems that combined ensuring that agricultural suppliers performed to an acceptable set of criteria, and then had the capacity and willingness to identify the most critical areas where further progress was required. The challenge for the company is now to encourage others to adopt their approach to making supply chains more sustainable, both for their customers and the consumers of their branded goods.