Suchergebnisse

This article demonstrates the necessity of looking at gender as a major analytical category in the analysis of agricultural development. Contrary to other production systems like plantations and state farms, it is characteristic of smallholder outgrower schemes that their operation is based on the farmers' control over land and labour. However, this study of smallholder tea production in Kericho District, Kenya shows that men do not automatically control their wives' labour. In the survey area, one‐third of all tea plots were partly or completely neglected largely because of conflicts between spouses. The problem of low productivity in smallholder tea production is thus intimately linked to the prevailing gender relations in a local community, a factor characteristically ignored by studies of smallholder contract farming which tend to focus narrowly on technical, institutional and economic factors.

Ursachen für die Produktivitätsunterschiede in der kleinbäuerlichen cash-crop-Produktion von Tee in Kenia waren schon Gegenstand etlicher wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen. Die Autorinnen wenden sich in ihrer Studie jedoch erstmals dem unterschiedlichen Einfluß der Geschlechter auf den Produktionsprozeß zu und finden hierin eine Hauptursache für den unterschiedlichen Erfolg des Teeanbaus. Tee als ein höchst arbeitsintensives Produkt konkurriert in der täglichen Bearbeitung mit den anderen Produkten für die Ernährungssicherung. In Familien, in denen allein die Frau sowohl für die Ernährung der Familie als auch für den Anbau des cash crops zu sorgen hat, wird phasenweise die Bearbeitung der Teepflanzen vernachlässigt, um die Erträge der food crops zu sichern. (DÜI-Spl)

Research on Eswatini's sugar industry has expanded rapidly over the past few years, which has provided information on increasing efficiencies under climate change, market competitiveness, and business integration in the industry. Such studies explore opportunities to increase profitability and sustainability in the sugar industry; motivated by low world sugar prices and rising costs of production. However, studies on farmworkers' conditions of work at the production node of the sugarcane production network are limited. Often, suppliers/producers in the agricultural sector are faced with a dilemma of meeting market demands and maintaining secure work for their employees – but the market and institutional pressures in Eswatini's sugar industry, because of the country's participation in the global sugarcane production network, continue to contribute towards decent work deficits on sugarcane farms. This study, being informed by the Global Production Network (GPN) framework, evaluates workers' conditions in the context of local embeddedness. The GPN framework enables a deeper analysis of the role of labour and the value workers add to the production process. Imperative to this study is to recognise workers' struggles as they participate in the sugarcane production network as an effective way of locating decent work in Eswatini's small- and medium-sized sugarcane outgrower farms. Using seven indicators adopted from the International Labour Organisation's Decent Work pillars, this study shows how the specific conditions at the production node of the network (farms) are embedded in a particular historical, institutional, and regulatory context, which included non-firm actors (in particular, Eswatini's government) who, in combination, shape the dynamics of the sugar industry. The study concluded that decent work deficits include informal and flexible employer-employee relations between farmers and farmworkers; the unfair treatment of women farmworkers on small-scale sugarcane farms; Eswatini's political climate and its impact on trade union representation on farms; and the effects that climate change has on farmworkers' conditions of work. ; Thesis (MSocSci) -- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology, 2021

Indonesia has a considerable area of degraded land requiring rehabilitation. However, most rehabilitation projects in the past have been government driven, depending on public funding (ndonesian government and international donors), and have focused mainly on technical aspects. As a result people living in surrounding targeted areas are not adopting rehabilitation techniques. Innovative approcahes are necessary if the objectives of a rehabilitation programme are to be met while providing benefits to private companies and local people. The findings of a study of outgrower schemes in Indonesian timber plantations suggested that company--community partnerships could be an alternative for implementing rehabilitation programmes. The partnership arrangement over a 10- to 45- year period is based on a contract. It states the rights and duties of each party in establishing a forestry plantation and the benefit-sharing agreement at the time of harvest. The schemes take place on logged-over forests and idle lands, mostly Imperata grasslands. The partnership provides opportunities for forestry plantation companies to play a social role and rehabilitate degraded resources. It also provides job opportunities to local people and incomes from harvested timber at the end of each rotation under a long-term contract.

Since the 1980s, a neoliberal paradigm has guided agricultural policy formulation in Africa with an unflinching preference for the commercialization of agriculture through the incorporation of smallholder farmers into global circuits of accumulation via outgrower arrangements. The paradigm has claimed that the promotion of integrated value chains will create jobs and enhance incomes in agrarian areas. This article assesses the manner in which men and women are positioned differentially in the outgrower value chains in terms of employment benefits. Drawing on interviews, the article explores the employment pattern in the outgrower value chain system and the structural dynamics that lead to benefits, or otherwise, for men and women in Ghana's largest fruit-processing company, Blue Skies, and its outgrower farms. This study finds that many jobs were created along the value chain for men and women, but that men have occupied the high-earning echelon of the value chain as outgrowers, as well as more secure positions as permanent staff in the factory, women have largely been employed as disposable casual workers in these two spaces.

Integration of smallholders in outgrower schemes has been advanced as a strategy for poverty reduction in the global south, but how terms and conditions of inclusion and exclusion shape divergent outcomes, and processes underpinning these local dynamics remain an under-researched area. This study, set in Zambia's southern 'sugarbelt' region of Mazabuka, draws on two contrasting outgrower schemes to examine determinants of smallholder inclusion in sugar value-chains, and consider how various terms and conditions underpining inclusion shape various interests, reactions and pathways for value capture among different local groups. Our study reaveals terms and conditions are important in shaping divergent outcomes for smallholders included in sugar value-chains. It shows determinants of inclusion and exclusion are complex and go beyond market imperatives that are production related (structural) to include social-cultural dynamics (non-structural). The centrality of the paper points to lived realities and experiences for different groups and political reactions from below, underlining how socially contested intersection of global–local value-chain produces diverse but interdependent hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion. For an early stage in planning of outgrower schemes by state and non-state actors, recognition of the various social groups and their complex engagement and reactions to changes in land-use and land control will not only expose competing interests but should inform polices, institutions and investments to improve value-chain impacts. This paper hopes to contribute towards a more nuanced understanding of the complex engagement of smallholders in changes in land use and land control in developing countries in the era of land-grabbing.

This report centres on two case studies concerning contract farming arrangements between growers and buyers in Swaziland. It also mentions the most important aspects of the economy and land tenure system briefly. The performance of the two schemes is evaluated and problems with replicating these contract farming schemes elsewhere are pointed out. (DÜI-Kst)