Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how contract farming is allowing for intense land and labour mobilization and how it has facilitated the integration of direct producers to commodity chains, without requiring the transfer of property over land.

Paper long abstract:

Although countries in Southern Africa have traditionally been large exporters of tobacco leaf, important changes have taken place in the past two decades: exports and the geographic footprint of tobacco are expanding and non-equity forms of production (mainly in the form of contract farming) are displacing direct forms of investment. Taken as a region Southern Africa is the third largest exporter of tobacco now and the tobacco contract farming schemes are among the largest in the continent.

This paper explores how contract farming is allowing for intense land and labour mobilization and how it has facilitated the integration of direct producers to commodity chains, without requiring the transfer of property over land. By comparing Southern African experiences and focusing on the Mozambican case, the paper argues that non-equity forms of production are more adaptable to contexts in which direct agricultural producers have access to land and were corporate investors in land face political contestation and the risks associated with informal land markets. Non-equity forms of production raise fewer red flag and less attention from the region's states. However, while contract farming seems to unleash an extensification of production it does entail the risk of reinforcing exploitative land and labour practices and in the absence of targeted state involvement it has limited capacity for enhancing productivity and effective spillover effects on the rest of the economy.