Contract farming and small farms
Burundi and Mexico are still having problems connected via Word Press (my blog platform) so I’m just going to post an exchange Diana Buja (de Treville) and I had via the message function of Facebook.
Hi rachel – I like your posts on small farms, and still cannot post to the site. So here is what I have to say (amongst other things) on the subject:
Over 95% of inhabitants in Burundi are smallholders who farm on less than an acre a family. These are truly subsistence-oriented farmers, whose livelihood increasingly hinges on one or more members of the family working outside of the farm. Their farms are labor-intensive and low-technology, and most are ‘organic’ only because they lack the finances, training, and-or markets to obtain inputs. And most lack electricity and running water. This is probably not the kind of bucolic small farm that increasing numbers of northern-hemisphere folk are yearning for. But it is the reality of small farms – not only here, but in most of the underdeveloped world, including in the over 25 countries of African and the Middle East in which I have worked either short or long term and others that I know from the literature, etc.
One way of assisting such smallholders to gain better inputs and market access is though an arrangement called contract farming, in which the farm contracts with a firm or a private entity to produce a given crop to specification. The contractor provides a guaranteed price, inputs, and technical assistance. I am currently working with farmers in a village near Hotel Club du Lac Tanganyika to set up contracting for vegetables and fruits for the hotel kitchen. While there has been a raging debate over the pros and cons of contract farming over the last 15 or so years, if carefully developed it can provide impoverished farmers with a basic level of guaranteed income off of their crops.
That’s really interesting. That’s going on here (Mexico) and a lot of food activists describe it as exploitation.
Yes, CF has been a topic of great debate for a couple of decades, and as many activities, exploitation or not is contingent upon a number of variables. I know of extremely bad and pretty good contracting arrangements. A while back I did a major work on CF, which continues to be referenced, and have worked on the topic off and on since then. Here’s a google link, below.
That doesn’t copy, so just search treville or detreville contract farming.
