Contract farming is an institutional arrangement between farmers and businesses to produce and transact agricultural commodities at predetermined prices and conditions, and it has recently received a heightened amount of attention despite being a relatively old phenomenon. A new wave of agricultural industrialization and the emergence of large-scale food retailing in developing countries may be precipitating the unprecedented shift in favor of contract farming.

This open access book identifies the methodological differences across disciplines that have generated a false binary in discussions of contract farming. The author explains the importance of adopting a more integrated theoretical perspective, providing insights into the ways in which this can reconcile conflicting positions. Given the immense diversity of contracting schemes, commodities and contexts-as well as the substantial regional differences in contract farming experiences across a range of outcomes-a syncretic understanding of contract farming is essential to the evaluation of the promise and perils of contract farming. The resulting book proposes a way forward that is holistic in nature, framing contract farming within a comparative institutional analysis so that it can better accommodate multidisciplinary priorities.

About the Author

Sudha Narayanan is Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. She holds a PhD from Cornell University, where she specialized in agricultural economics.

Book Information
ISBN 9783031764868
Author Sudha Narayanan
Format Hardback
Page Count 200
Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher Springer International Publishing AG