Migrant workers into contract farmers: Processes of labour mobilization in colonial and contemporary Mozambique

Abstract

During the post-liberalization period, contract farming schemes have become a recurrent feature of agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa. Contract farming is not a new phenomenon in the continent but it has gained in magnitude and significance in the past decades (Ochieng 2010; Oya 2012; Prowse 2012; Watts 1994). In some countries and sectors, it is now the predominant form of organizing production and commercialization. In its outgrower form it replaces the kind of exchange that would otherwise take place in open markets with an exchange of agricultural commodities that involves an agreement prior to production between producers and traders (or processors). The contract stipulates the conditions of production, such as the volume deliverable, the price, the provision of inputs and technical assistance and the setting of quality standards. Various multilateral institutions, donors, governments and investors have hailed this kind of farming as the way forward for integrating smallholder farmers into global markets and for overcoming the crises of agricultural financing and marketing (FAO 2012; Will 2013).