State led contract farming in maize production and farmers’ lived experiences

The dynamics of contract farming are different between food crops and cash crops with experiences, perceptions and outlook between these schemes entirely different. The government of Zimbabwe implemented a Special Maize Programme for Import Substitution from the 2016/17 agricultural season also known as command agriculture which is a state led contract farming scheme for maize. While the impacts, challenges and structure of contract farming have been documented (e.g. Mazwi and Muchetu, 2015, Moyo 2013), much of the focus of these studies have been on contract farming for cash crops. The objectives of these case stories are, therefore, to document farmers' production and market experiences in state-led contract farming for maize as a food crop and mirror their perceptions and reflection of contract farming for food crops across production gradients, gender and varied production capacities. Click below for the rest of the paper.