Paper short abstract:

An empirical investigation of contract farming on small-scale land holdings in Zimbabwe that utilises a unique data set based on an annual survey of 766 resettled and communal households. We report on the situation in three sites, covering three of the five natural regions of Zimbabwe.

Paper long abstract:

Following Zimbabwe`s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), which effectively replaced the large-scale commercial farming sector with a much broader small-scale production base, opportunities for small-scale farmers to engage in contract farming have increased markedly. In fact, many households in our sample have recently taken to contract farming, especially for tobacco, where commercial growers have exited or where market failures have resulted in low supply and high cost of agricultural inputs. Given that the majority of rural households depend on rain-fed agriculture as the main source of income, except in drought years, we feel that this phenomenon deserves further empirical investigation. Who is engaging in contract farming and why? What are the terms of these contracts and who benefits? How have trends in agricultural production changed? And how might contract farming help in the (re)development of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector? We attempt to answer these and other questions by utilizing a unique data set, the Zimbabwe Rural Household Dynamics Study (ZRHDS) data, which is the longest running panel study in Africa. The data set is based on an annual survey of 766 households (166 of which were recruited in 2012) drawn from resettlement and communal areas in three of the five `natural regions` of Zimbabwe. Thus we are able to report on changes in agriculture, and specifically in contracting farming, over time and across different tenure regimes and agro-ecological regions.