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The Transition to Modern Agriculture: Contract Farming in Developing Economies
Author(s) -
Wang H. Holly,
Wang Yanbing,
Delgado Michael S.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aau036
Subject(s) - contract farming , agriculture , empirical research , developing country , economics , welfare , china , business , empirical evidence , transition countries , production (economics) , market economy , economic growth , microeconomics , international economics , political science , geography , archaeology , philosophy , epistemology , law
Recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries, motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture. In this article, we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in both developed and developing countries, using China as a special case of the latter. We pay careful attention to broad implications of this research for economic development. We first find empirical studies consistently support the positive contribution of contract farming to production and supply chain efficiency. We also find that most empirical studies identify a positive and significant effect of contract farming on farmer welfare, yet are often unable to reach consistent conclusions as to significant correlates of contract participation.