The purpose of this brief is to highlight the main legal elements and principles to be considered in the design of farming contracts which are instruments that regulate contract farming operations. The legal elements and principles presented below are applicable to different national systems and may be employed in the [...]

En 2015, conscients de l'importance de mieux faire connaître le régime juridique applicable aux opérations d'agriculture contractuelle, l'Institut international pour l'unification du droit privé (UNIDROIT), l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (FAO) et le Fonds international de développement agricole (FIDA) ont préparé un Guide juridique sur l'agriculture contractuelle [...]

The focus in this paper is on two relatively large maize-based CF schemes with fixed input packages (Masara and Akate) and a number of smaller and more flexible CF schemes in a remote region in Ghana (Upper West). Results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield [...]

Health-related incentives to reward effort or commitment are commonplace in many professional contracts throughout the world. Typically absent from small-scale agriculture in poor countries, such incentives may help overcome both health issues for remote rural families and supply issues for firms. Using a randomized control design, we investigate the impact [...]

Interest in contract farming as a mechanism to coordinate linkages between farmers and agribusiness firms has grown considerably in the recent past, in large part because of the international trends towards tighter alignment in agrifood supply chains. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been responding [...]

This study was done with the objectives of understanding the contractual relations between buyers and small-scale growers in the tobacco industry in Malawi and the impact of contract farming on smallholder incomes. Cross-sectional data was collected from 211 contract and 109 non-contract smallholder burley tobacco farmers who sold tobacco in [...]

This brief gives an overview of contract farming including the types of contract farming arrangement, its advantages and disadvantages. It shows, among others, why companies are interested in contracting with smallholders and the role of farmers organizations.

Growing inequality has become an important concern in many countries. One of the ways that inequality is perpetuated is through differential market access across regions. This research deals with one of the primary determinants of regional inequality manifested in terms of market access. Nepal is one country where hierarchical geography [...]

Contract farming has often been associated with an increase in the income of participating households. It is unclear, however, whether contract farming increases other aspects of household welfare. We use data from six regions of Madagascar and a selection-on-observables design in which we control for a household’s marginal utility of [...]

This brief gives an overview of contract farming including its advantages, pitfalls and guiding principles for responsible contract farming operations set up by FAO. It shows practical cases in the Caribbean for different commodities.