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Project
Contract Farming Initiative
Over the past three decades, political economy studies have contributed to a much better understanding of the differentiated impact of contract farming in the Global South. Yet, important questions remain. These include about the interface of contract farming and changes in land tenure; the prevalence of unpaid household labour and the exploitation of hired labour among small-scale producers; contract farming as a form of extractivism (of the resources and labour contained in the commodity); and the ecological burden of the expansion and intensification of agriculture associated with contract farming.
The Contract Farming Initiative is a network for researchers and activists interested in these questions and others around the dynamics and political economy of contract farming, rural livelihoods and agrarian change.
The co-founders of the Contract Farming Initiative are:
Mark Vicol (Wageningen University); Helena Pérez Niño (ISS); Niels Fold (University of Copenhagen); Caroline Hambloch (Humboldt University of Berlin); Sudha Narayanan (IFPRI)
Results
The Initiative’s activities since 2020 include:
- Contract Farming and Agrarian Change Workshop, 10th December 2021
- Publication of the special issue The Political Economy of Contract Farming: Emerging Insights and Changing Dynamics, January 2022, in the Journal of Agrarian Change
- Development of the edited volume “Handbook of Contract Farming in the Global South”, to be published in 2025 by Routledge