Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the political economy of contract farming in Zimbabwe, interrogating the concomitant (re)configuration of food systems and agrarian transitions, and provides transformative recommendations.

Paper long abstract:

Contract farming is among the most heralded pathways for transforming land use, crop production, food security and commercialisation. Accordingly, farming on contract, either private-led or state-led, is a topical agricultural financing and development approach. A large corpus of literature pertaining to contract farming in contemporary Zimbabwe, Africa and other parts of the global South is available. Yet there are lacunae in relation to the political economy of farming on contract, and the implications to (re)configuration of agri-food systems and agrarian transitions. This paper uses Zimbabwe as the heuristic case study and political economy as the evaluative lenses to interrogate the multiple, complex, fluid and ongoing interactions and outcomes of contract farming, the nature and configuration of food systems and agrarian transitions. The paper prioritises four questions: a) How are contract farming, food systems and agrarian transitions linked? b) How can the relationships (or non-existence of these) be explored from a political economy standpoint? c) What are the insinuations of farming on contract, the (re)configurations of food systems and agrarian transitions to Zimbabwe’s and broadly, Africa’s futures? d) What alternative agricultural financing and development options can be adopted to sustainably transform Africa’s futures and wellbeing through agriculture? Overall, the paper shows the manifold interactions, impacts and outcomes therefore defies a mono inference. Nevertheless, the paper advances the need to rethink both private-led and state-led contract farming and more importantly its link with food systems and agrarian transitions, and to re-envision the future of Zimbabwe and the African continent through agriculture.