The political economy of contract farming in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This book examines the emerging patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the advent of the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) implemented from the year 2000, drawing from the Nairobi debates of the 1980's on contract farming and the peasantry in Africa. With a specific reference to contract farming in tobacco and sugarcane, it explores the scale, extent, power relations and how these impact on land use and the well-being of farmers who benefitted under the land reform. It also offers an insight on how contract farming influences social contradictions in rural Zimbabwe while assessing the emerging institutional finance mechanisms that have emerged as a response to the radical land reforms and the attendant international isolation, political and economic, of the country since 2000. The book also offers lessons on how agrarian finance can be structured to be inclusive for the benefit of small-scale farmers.