Who gains from contract farming? Dependencies, power relations, and institutional change

ABSTRACT

The paper highlights the mechanisms through which outgrower contract farming creates dependencies at the local level. Using sugarcane case study in Malawi, we show that dependencies are created through redefinition of use rights to customary land and through the redefinition of cash flows into outgrower communities. Through this two-dimensional process, corporations can secure access to land, exert control over local communities and transform the local social relations of reciprocity serving as the pillars of resistance. Our results indicate that contract farming changes rural agrarian relations, transforms local family institutions by carefully selecting a few household members with influence into the scheme and selectively dispossessing the poor community members.

KEYWORDS:

• Contract-farming
• sugarcane
• dependency
• dispossession
• reciprocity
• Agrarian change

Acknowledgements

Our thanks go to the many interview partners who kindly agreed to answer our questions. We acknowledge the constructive comments of three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jean-David Gerber http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9111-9071

Notes

1 DCGT is a government Trust entity for smallholder sugarcane growing in the Dwangwa area. DCGL is a limited company established by the Trust (DCGT) in 1999 to represent the Trust and its farmers in establishing a Cane Supply Agreement between the Trust and agribusiness companies (e.g. Illovo).

2 Many variant CF models exist in Malawi but the CF under study is an outgrower with a centralized estate, also referred to as nucleus estate-outgrower schemes; it has a core estate-factory leading the scheme (Baumann 2000).

3 Centralized estate with a management company operating the outgrower scheme and the main contracting partner serving as both private (DCGL) and public (Trust).

4 Leroy Vail (1975) made the first comprehensive analysis of the agrarian historiography of Malawi. Since then, many studies have been done on the nature of colonial agrarian policies on the smallholder sectors (Kydd 1984; Sahn and Arulpragasam 1991; Mkandawire 1992; Sindima 2002). Others have emphasized the unequal treatment of the smallholder and estate sector, including land and labor exploitation in favor of estate owners during colonialism (Chipende and Vaughan 1986; Mhone 1992), while other historical accounts provide evidence of smallholder exploitation in post-colonial Malawi through agriculture marketing boards (Harrigan 2003; Chirwa and Dorward 2013; Chinsinga 2017).

5 The Land Act (Cap. 57:01), section 25

6 The British colonial administration defined customary law based on the logic of indirect rule, whereby chiefs or administrators were installed and misconceived as owners of the land. This shaped post-colonial understanding of what constituted customary land (see Chanock 2005; Mvula and Haller 2009; Peters 2013). Today, customary land is defined as: “all land held, occupied or used under customary law, but does not include any public land” (Laws of Malawi, Section 2, Cap. 57:01).

7 For a complete understanding of the functioning of matrilineal and patrilocal matrilineal land transfers and inheritance, it is often not enough to speak only about the matrilineal or patrilineal aspect without specifying the post-marital residency. However, in this section the aim is to show the institutional changes over time in the Dwangwa area. Other studies (Peters 2010; Kishindo 2004; Mandala 1978; Pachai 1978) have explained in detail the dynamics of resource allocations under patrilineal and matrilineal, as well as matrilocal kinship systems.

8 The above observation is not a new phenomenon in Malawi. Such instances of striving Chewa family structure and matrilineal property inheritance rules in the face of Ngoni conquests have long been documented (e.g. Langworthy 1975).

9 We are also aware of the implications of historical developments on this change process. Notably, ‘the growth of the slave trade in the nineteenth century and the opportunity which this gave to some lineages to acquire women (i.e. slave women) who could be married virilocally’ within matrilineal structures (Murray 1922; Douglas 1964; Wright 1975); ‘the intrusion of patrilineal peoples like the Ngoni which increased the incidence of virilocal marriage and patrilineal descent’ (Schoffeleers 1968; Langworthy 1975; Kandawire 1979; Phiri 1983); ‘the spread of certain Christian missionary teachings that are in conflict with matrilineal principles of family organization’ (McCracken 1977) ‘and such developments of the colonial period as labor migrancy and cash-cropping which often impinged on relations between husband and wife and family life in general’ (Read 1942; Oliver 1957; Boeder 1974).

10 See the Land Act of 1967

11 Illovo Sugar Limited is a Multi-national company belonging to Associated British Foods. Until 2017, Illovo was the main sugarcane miller in Malawi.

12 The Cane Supply Agreement outlines the conditions of contract (i.e. quality, quantity, time, farm management) for the cane supply and the conditions for the division of proceeds between the outgrowers and the miller (Illovo).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is an output of a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grants no 10001A_152773].

Notes on contributors

Timothy Adams

Timothy Adams is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern. His current research focuses on large-scale land investments, resource management and governance, gender studies, and innovation policy. Correspondence Email: [email protected]

Jean-David Gerber

Jean-David Gerber is an assistant professor at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern. He holds a postgraduate degree in Urban Development, Resources Management and Governance (2004) from the University of Lausanne and a PhD in Public Administration (2005) from the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP). His current research focuses on land policy, housing policy and large-scale land acquisitions. Email: [email protected].

Michèle Amacker

Michèle Amacker is an Assistant Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland. Her special interest is in poverty and precariousness from a gender perspective. Michèle has experience in cross-national research and is an expert in qualitative and mixed-method designs. Email: [email protected]

Tobias Haller

Tobias Haller is Professor at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern. He holds a PhD (2001) and a Habilitation (2007) in Social Anthropology from the University of Zurich. He has specialized on economic and ecological anthropology with a focus on New Institutionalism and Political Ecology. He is working on issues such as the management of the commons, institutional change, conservation, development and participation, transnational companies, environmental perceptions, mining and large-scale land acquisitions. Email: [email protected]