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Abstract
This article examines crop diversification and household relations within a contract farming scheme in the Central region of Malawi. It discusses a pilot study that formally included wives to grow soya as part of a tobacco contract in Kasungu district. The article assesses whether this intervention improved benefits for the firm (through higher repayment rates), the farm (through higher yields for key crops) and the family (through greater well-being). Club-level data suggest that repayment rates remained the same. Comparisons between participating and non-participating households show a lack of accord between spouses: husbands asserted that maize yields and household well-being declined; wives highlight how they withdrew labour from soya, not maize, as they lost some control over this crop. Both spouses agreed that soya production and yields declined sharply but also that the firm should continue contracting wives to grow soya through a separate contract. Using data from both spouses offers a window on non-cooperation within households, with practical relevance for firms wishing to diversify the crops they are supporting via contract farming initiatives.
Acknowledgements
The research for this article was completed within the Gender Equity in Contract Farming in Eastern Africa (CONGENIAL) project, financed by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development through Phase I of the Development Frontiers funding window (grant number ES/K011693/1). The author, the principal investigator for the project, wishes to thank Jytte Agergaard for supporting the training of enumerators in Lilongwe, Peter Fredslund Jensen for contributing to fieldwork in Kasungu, and especially Betty Chinyamunyamu, who facilitated affiliation to the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM) and commented on a previous version of this article. The author would also like to thank Ron Ngwira and Hugh Saunders of Alliance One Malawi for their commitment to engaging with the long-term research that the author has conducted in Malawi for more than 20 years. This manuscript would not be possible without the hard work of the team of enumerators who completed the survey instrument and visual household trajectories, which included Agness Banda, Grey Mutiye, Frazer Mkwaila, Maness Kochelari, Neo Ndovi, Austin Mbamba and Olive Mkumbadzala.
Notes
1 See M. Prowse and J. Moyer‐Lee, ‘A Comparative Value Chain Analysis of Smallholder Burley Tobacco Production in Malawi, 2003/4 and 2009/10’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 14, 3 (2014), pp. 323–46; J. Moyer‐Lee and M. Prowse, ‘How Traceability is Restructuring Malawi’s Tobacco Industry’, Development Policy Review, 33, 2 (2015), pp. 159–74; M. Prowse and P. Grassin, Tobacco, Transformation and Development Dilemmas from Central Africa (Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
2 B. Chinsinga, ‘ The Political Economy of Agricultural Commercialisation in Malawi’, Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) Working Paper 17 (Brighton, Institute of Development Studies, 2018).
3 R. Lencucha, T. Moyo, R. Labonte, J. Drope, A. Appau and D. Makoka, ‘ Shifting from Tobacco Growing to Alternatives in Malawi? A Qualitative Analysis of Policy and Perspectives’, Health Policy and Planning, 35, 7 (2020), pp. 810–18; M. Kachulu, L. Rasche, U. Schnieder and V. Chinene, ‘ Tobacco Substitutability and its Effect on Producer Revenue and Foreign Exchange Earnings under Smallholder Agriculture in Malawi’, African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 13, 4 (2018), pp. 331–44; B. Chinsinga and M. Matitta, ‘The Political Economy of the Groundnut Value Chain in Malawi: Its Re-Emergence Amidst Policy Chaos, Strategic Neglect and Opportunism’, Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) Working Paper 56 (Brighton, Institute of Development Studies, 2021); A. Wineman, L.Chilora and T. Jayne, ‘Trends in Tobacco Production and Prices in Malawi’, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 4 October 2021, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntab197, retrieved 27 January 2022.
4 T. Benson, Disentangling Food Security from Subsistence Agriculture in Malawi (Washington DC, International Food Policy Research Institute [IFPRI], 2021); G. Maggio and N. Sitko, ‘ Diversification Is In the Detail: Accounting for Crop System Heterogeneity to Inform Diversification Policies in Malawi and Zambia’, Journal of Development Studies, 57, 2 (2021), pp. 264–88; J. Smith and J. Fang, ‘“If you kill tobacco, you kill Malawi”: Structural Barriers to Tobacco Diversification for Sustainable Development’, Sustainable Development, 28, 6, (2020), pp. 1575–83; A. Wineman, L. Chilora and T.S. Jayne, ‘Trends in Tobacco Production and Prices in Malawi’, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 4 October 2021.
5 S. Bolwig, P. Gibbon and S. Jones, ‘ The Economics of Smallholder Organic Contract Farming in Tropical Africa’, World Development, 37, 6 (2009), pp. 1094–1104; S. Miyata, N. Minot and D. Hu, ‘Impact of Contract Farming on Income: Linking Small Farmers, Packers, and Supermarkets in China’, World Development, 37, 11 (2009), pp. 1781–90; S. Setboonsarng, P. Leung and A. Stefan, ‘Rice Contract Farming in Lao PDR: Moving from Subsistence to Commercial Agriculture’, ADBI Discussion Paper No. 90 (Tokyo, Asian Development Bank Institute, 2008); M. Bellamare, ‘As You Sow, So Shall You Reap: The Welfare Impacts of Contract Farming’, World Development, 40, 7, (2012), pp. 1418–34; M. Bellemare and J. Bloem, ‘Does Contract Farming Improve Welfare? A Review’, World Development, 112 (2018), pp. 259–71; G. Ton, W. Vellema, S. Desiere, S. Weituschat and M. D’Haese, ‘ Contract Farming for Improving Smallholder Incomes: What Can We Learn from Effectiveness Studies’, World Development, 104 (2018), p. 46–64.
6 C. Saenger, M. Torero and M. Qaim, ‘Impact of Third-party Contract Enforcement in Agricultural Markets – A Field Experiment in Vietnam’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 96, 4 (2014), pp. 1220–38; C.M. Torero, M. a nd A. Viceisza, ‘ Potential Collusion and Trust: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Vietnam’, African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 11, 1 (2016), pp. 22–32; I. Mugwagwa, J. Bijman and J. Trienekens, ‘ Why Do Agribusiness Firms Simultaneously Source from Different Contract Farming Arrangements? Evidence from the Soybean Industry in Malawi’, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 22 (2019), pp. 79–96; S. Kunte, M. Wollni and C. Keser, ‘ Making It Personal: Breach and Private Ordering in a Contract Farming Experiment’, European Review of Agricultural Economics, 44, 1 (2018), pp. 121–48; S. Rosch and D. Ortega, ‘ Willingness to Contract Versus Opportunity to Contract: A Case Study in Kenya’s French Bean Export Market’, Agricultural Economics, 50, 1 (2019), pp. 27–37.
7 J. van Donge. ‘ The Fate of an African “chaebol”: Malawi’s Press Corporation After Democratisation’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 40, 4 (2002), pp. 651–81.
8 The first three main tobacco-leaf companies have been located in Malawi since the 1960s and Limbe Leaf became the dominant leaf merchant after the withdrawal of the Imperial Tobacco Company in the early 1980s. For an overview of the history of tobacco production and marketing in Nyasaland/Malawi over the past 100 years, see M. Prowse, ‘A History of Tobacco Production and Marketing in Malawi, 1890–2010’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 7, 4 (2013), pp. 691–712.
9 For a detailed summary of the changes in the tobacco value chain during this time, see M. Prowse, ‘ A Comparative Value Chain Analysis of Burley Tobacco in Malawi: 2003/04 and 2009/10’. IOB Working Paper 2011:09 (Antwerp, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, 2011).
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 M.J. Watts, ‘Life under Contract: Contract Farming, Agrarian Restructuring, and Flexible Accumulation’, in P.D. Little and M.J. Watts, Living under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa ( Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) pp. 21–77.
13 Ibid.; G. Porter and K. Phillips-Howard, ‘Comparing Contracts: An Evaluation of Contract Farming Schemes in Africa’, World Development, 25, 2 (1997) pp. 227–38.
14 S. Barrientos, ‘Gendered Global Production Networks: Analysis of Cocoa-Chocolate Sourcing’, Regional Studies, 48, 5 (2014), pp. 791–803; D. Rubin and C. Manfre, ‘Promoting Gender-Equitable Agricultural Value Chains: Issues, Opportunities, and Next Steps’, in A.R. Quisumbing, R. Meinzen-Dick, T.L. Raney, A. Croppenstedt, J.A. Behrman and A. Peterman (eds), Gender in Agriculture: Closing the Knowledge Gap (Dordrecht, FAO and Springer, 2014), pp. 287–313.
15 D. von Bülow and A. Sørensen, ‘Gender and Contract Farming: Tea Outgrower Schemes in Kenya’, Review of African Political Economy, 20, 56 (1993), p. 41.
16 Porter and Phillips-Howard, Comparing Contracts .
17 G. Elepu and I. Nalukenge, ‘Contract Farming, Smallholders and Commercialization of Agriculture in Uganda: The Case of Sorghum, Sunflower, and Rice Contract Farming Schemes’, The Center for Effective Global Action Working Paper No. AfD-0907 (Berkeley, University of California, 2009).
18 M. Maertens and J. Swinnen, ‘Gender and Modern Supply Chains in Developing Countries’, Journal of Development Studies, 48, 10 (2012), pp. 1412–30.
19 Moyer‐Lee and Prowse, How Traceability is Restructuring Malawi’s Tobacco Industry.
20 L. Raynolds, ‘Wages for Wives: Renegotiating Gender and Production Relations in Contract Farming in the Dominican Republic’, World Development, 30, 5 (2002), pp. 783–98; G. Koczberski, ‘Loose Fruit Mamas: Creating Incentives for Smallholder Women in Palm Oil Production in Papua New Guinea’, World Development, 35, 7 (2007), pp. 1172–85.
21 O. Masakure and S. Henson, ‘Why Do Small-Scale Producers Choose to Produce under Contract? Lessons from Non-Traditional Vegetable Exports from Zimbabwe’, World Development, 33, 10 (2005), pp. 1721–33.
22 M. Watts, P.D. Little, C. Mock, M. Billings and S. Jaffee, ‘Contract Farming in Africa: An Executive Summary’, IDA Working Paper No. 366 (Bingham ton, Institute for Development Anthropology, 1988); P. Little and C. Dolan, ‘What it Means to be Restructured: Non-Traditional Commodities and Structural Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in A. Haugerud, P. Stone and P. Little (eds), Rethinking Commodities: Anthropological Views of the Global Marketplace (Boulder, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 59–78.
23 C. Dolan, ‘The “Good Wife”: Struggles over Land and Labour in the Kenyan Horticultural Sector’, Journal of Development Studies, 37, 3 (2000), pp. 39–70.
24 Ibid.
25 M. Prowse, ‘Contract Farming in Developing Countries: A Review’, À Savoir, 12 (Paris, Agence française de développement, 2012), p. 25.
26 Watts, ‘Life under Contract’.
27 Ibid.; von Bülow and A. Sørensen, Gender and Contract Farming.
28 C. Doss, ‘ Testing among Models of Intrahousehold Resource Allocation’, World Development, 24, 10 (1996), pp. 1597–1609.
29 G.S. Becker, A Treatise on the family (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981). For critical summaries of this model, see C. Doss, ‘Intrahousehold Bargaining and Resource Allocation in Developing Countries’, World Bank Research Observer, 28, 1 (2013), and Quisumbing et al. (eds), Gender in Agriculture.
30 See E. Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development (London, Allen and Unwin, 1970); A. Sen, ‘ Gender and Cooperative Conflicts’, WIDER Working Paper 18 (Helsinki, World Institut e for Development Economics Research, 1987); A. Sen, ‘Gender and Cooperative Conflicts’, in I. Tinker (ed.), Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development (New York, Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 123–49; L.J. Haddad, J. Hoddinott and H. Alderman, Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Developing Countries (New York, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); B. Agarwal, ‘Bargaining and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household’, Feminist Economics, 3, 1 (1997), pp. 1–51.
31 L. Raynolds, ‘Wages for Wives: Renegotiating Gender and Production Relations in Contract Farming in the Dominican Republic’, World Development, 30, 5 (2002), pp. 783–98.
32 Von Bülow and Sørensen, in Gender and Contract Farming, also highlight how collective protests of women in Tanzania and Kenya helped them to gain a share of the income from tea contract farming. Such wages may well not be equivalent to men’s wages, as Dolan, ‘The “Good Wife”’; Barrientos, ‘Gendered Global Production Networks’; and Maertens and Swinnen, ‘Gender and Modern Supply Chains’, highlight steep gender wage gaps in vegetable, cocoa and French bean production, respectively.
33 E. Katz,‘The Intra-Household Economics of Voice and Exit’, Feminist Economics, 3, 3 (1997), pp. 25–46.
34 Koczberski, ‘Loose Fruit Mamas’.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Pareto efficiency refers to when no individual can be made better off without making at least one individual worse off. See C. Udry, ‘Gender, Agricultural Production, and the Theory of the Household’, Journal of Political Economy, 104, 5 (1996), pp. 1010–46; F. Vermeulen, ‘Collective Household Models: Principles and Main Results’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 16, 4, (2002), pp. 533–64.
38 Udry, ‘Gender, Agricultural Production’.
39 Vermeulen, ‘Collective Household Models’.
40 Doss, ‘Intrahousehold Bargaining and Resource Allocation’; B. Kebede, M. Tarazona, A. Munro and A. Verschoor, ‘Intra-Household Efficiency: An Experimental Study from Ethiopia’, Journal of African Economies, 23, 1 (2014), pp. 105–50; C.I. Anderson, T.W. Reynolds and M.K. Gugerty, ‘ Husband and Wife Perspectives on Farm Household Decision-Making Authority and Evidence on Intra-Household Accord in Rural Tanzania’, World Development, 90 (2017), pp. 169–83.
41 V. Iversen, C. Jackson, B. Kebede, A. Munro and A. Verschoor, ‘Do Spouses Realise Cooperative Gains? Experimental Evidence from Rural Uganda’, World Development, 39, 4, (2011), pp. 569–78.
42 H.W. Langworthy, ‘ Chewa or Malawi Political Organizations in the Precolonial Era’, in B. Pachai (ed.), The Early History of Malawi (London, Longman, 1972), pp. 102–22.
43 The Tumbukas who had settled in Mzimba were subsequently dominated by the Ngoni (from southern Africa), from whom the Tumbuka assimilated the practice of paying lobola (bride price).
44 Prowse, ‘ A History of Tobacco Production and Marketing in Malawi’ .
45 As already explained, we use a further OLS model with a fuller set of household controls. We also offer IV regression estimates using initial randomisation as an instrument.
46 Regressing a dummy of participant clubs against repayment rates using the original randomisation variable as an instrument shows a constant of 79.35 and an insignificant coefficient for participant clubs of –3.58.
47 M. Prowse, ‘ Becoming a Bwana and Burley Tobacco in the Central Region of Malawi’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 47, 4 (2009), pp. 575–602.
48 Udry, ‘Gender, Agricultural Production’; Kebede et al., ‘Intra-Household Efficiency’.
49 Anderson et al., ‘Husband and Wife Perspectives’.
50 Koczberski, ‘Loose Fruit Mamas’.
51 Udry, ‘Gender, Agricultural Production’.