With globalization, market liberalization, and the rapid development of rural infrastructure, new market opportunities for high-value crops and livestock production are expanding in both developed and developing countries. This has translated into increased use of contract farming to establish market linkages for the poor in developing countries. In poor areas [...]

In India, until a few years ago, problems existed in getting quality raw materials for processing or fresh marketing, especially for perishable high value crops. Processing and marketing firms faced issues of high cost, lack of availability, poor quality and timeliness due to the regulatory regime, which did not permit [...]

Indian agriculture is dominated by smallholders - of the total 101 million farm households 86 percent have land holdings of less than or equal to 2 ha, and their average size of land holding is 0.53 ha (Government of India (GoI), 2006a). How long can these households survive cultivating such [...]

Contract farming has been considered a new hope to instil dynamism in third world agriculture. However, there remains serious concern whether small peasants will be able to benefit from this system since buyers may often be a single large or at most, few large corporations, a typical case of monopsony. [...]

This paper examines the prospects for organic agriculture (OA) and the production of biofuels as strategies for rural development in Cambodia and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). Both agricultural activities are growing worldwide, although there are some questions as to how effective they are, environmentally and socially. These [...]

Contract farming is a means to assist small growers in gaining market access and reducing price risk, and as such it has attracted attention from development agencies and governments in developing countries. This paper reviews literature related to contract farming in Thailand and adds updated information based on field visits [...]

Poverty is prevalent among smallholder farmers in transition economies where market failures prevail and where the capacity of the public sector is limited. This study assesses the potential of organic contract farming as a private sector institutional arrangement to reduce rural poverty. Contract farming appears to facilitate market linkages for [...]

Cai, Junning, Luyna Ung, Sununtar Setboonsarng, and PingSun Leung. 2008. Rice Contract Farming in Cambodia: Empowering Farmers to Move Beyond the Contract Toward Independence. ADBI Discussion Paper 109. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute.

Based on a survey of rice contract farming for export in Cambodia, this paper uses simple mean comparison, propensity [...]

Poverty is prevalent among small farms in transition economies such as the Lao PDR, where market failures prevail and subsistence production is the norm. Contract farming is emerging as a promising tool to facilitate market linkages and provide the necessary support that enables small farms to transition to commercial production. [...]

Giovannucci, D. and Purcell, T., 2008. Standards and agricultural trade in Asia.

In developing countries markets for agri-food products are changing at a pace that is unparalleled in modern history. Markets are increasingly open and increasingly homogenized toward international tastes and requirements for levels of quality, packaging, safety, and even process [...]