An Analysis of Organic Contract Farming Schemes in East Africa

Abstract

As noted in a number of chapters in this volume, recent years have seen a substantial increase in African smallholder production to ‘sustainability’ standards. This reflects the dynamic growth of Northern markets for products certified to these standards and, in turn, the premium prices that this generates. All of the production concerned appears to be organized through a contemporary variant of contract farming. Like earlier African variants, this is donor-supported. But contracting for sustainability attributes is generally by private corporations rather than by government or public—private agencies and contracts are ‘market based’, in the sense that they tend to focus mainly on price and quality requirements rather than input supply, production calendars and so on.