Contract Farming, Capital and State

‘At a time when the Indian State is thrusting Contract Farming on the Indian farmers despite the latter’s fierce resistance which has become a national upsurge and brought thousands of protesters to the gates of Delhi where they have camped in bitter cold for months, this study of Contract Farming and the corporatization of agriculture, is both apposite and valuable. Based on extensive field work and insightful analysis this is a truly pioneering work.’

—Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

 ‘A book that could not be more timely: researched in the region at the heart of India’s green revolution now at the heart of a new corporate agriculture which controls production by controlling everything except the land. Read the background in this book to learn why India’s 2020 Farm Laws have provoked perhaps the largest protest in world history.’

—Barbara Harriss-White, FAcSS, Emeritus Professor and Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford University, UK

‘Contract farming is restructuring rural livelihoods around the developing world, with profound implications for the well-being of the women, men and their families that live in the countryside, and beyond. Based on extensive fieldwork, Ritika Shrimali's new book brings fresh and important insights into the dynamics and ramifications of these processes, and in particular the interface between farmers, capital and the state, with important implications for India and beyond. Contract Farming, Capital and State should be widely read, and will be welcomed by all those engaged in agrarian political economy.’

—Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Professor of Economics and International Development Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada; Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Journal of Development Studies

The book argues that an increasing corporatisation of agriculture in India that is enabled by its neoliberal State, in the name of ‘development’, is contributing towards deepening of inequality in rural India.

It says that Contract Farming (CF) acts as a conduit that enables the coming together of myriad production relations (mercantile, finance, productive) to sell agri-commodities to the capitalist peasant. It is an accumulation strategy that brings together various factions of domestic and foreign capital together. It shows that CF as an accumulation strategy is enabled by an active interventionist state and this neoliberal Indian state mediates the relation between the agri-capital and Indian peasantry.

The book  further analyzes contract farming as a part of the totality of the capitalist mode of production in context of developing countries with a large agrarian base--- asking three fundamental questions – what is CF, how and why is it done and what are the implications of it.

​Dr Ritika Shrimali teachesat the Center for Global Studies at Huron University College, Western University, Ontario, Canada. She specialises in development studies and agrarian political economy.