This review tries, through the analysis of academic, institutional and technical literature and through the study of some documented contract farming cases, to give some answers to the most frequently raised questions concerning contract farming practices: Are smallholders excluded from contract farming? Do contract participants display significantly higher incomes than nonparticipants? Are some crops more concerned by this practice than others and if so, which ones? What are the roles of producer organisations and NGOs?
This study aims at offering some general suggestions that farmers or their representatives could bear in mind when entering into contract-farming arrangements. It also presents contractual, technological, financial, institutional, political and legal types of innovation that have helped to overcome the challenges that can undermine contract-farming operations.
