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1 “They Think We can manufacture crops” Contract Farming and the Nontraditional Commodity Business in May 1994 i sat at a meeting in the office of a large international development organization in downtown Banjul, the small capital city of The Gambia, West africa. The conversation centered on the need to diversify the country’s exports and its dependence on groundnuts, a traditional export crop whose annual export earnings had been declining for the past decade. The discussion eventually turned to how The Gambia, with its favorable climate, political stability, low labor costs, and relatively close proximity to European markets, could increase its role in the growing fresh fruit and vegetable and cut flower trade to Europe, an activity that already had achieved some success. a glossy, colorful brochure financed by a British aid agency was handed out; it included the caption “Cut Flowers , The Gambia: An Opportunity to Invest” (commonwealth secretariat and the national investment Board, n.d.). Key questions raised at the meeting included (1) how could contract farming of “nontraditional” exports commodities (green beans, chilies, and cut flowers) play a role in this trade; and (2) how could beneficial links between Gambian farmers and international markets and businesses be forged? later in that same year i attended a similar meeting in accra, Ghana, where policy makers again were praising the benefits of export diversification and the nontraditional export trade to Europe, which both were perceived as mechanisms for bolstering the country’s economy and alleviating poverty. in this case it was argued that the country had relied too long on traditional export commodities such as cocoa, whose trade volume had improved little in recent years. once again, the export of nontraditional commodities (ntcs) to lucrative markets in the West (Europe and the United states) was viewed as a means to diversify exports and achieve economic growth. The kinds of discussions at this and the Banjul meetings were not without financial consequences, as millions of dollars of development funds at the time were chasing nontraditional commodity programs in africa , ofen relying on contract farming models for implementation. They were (and still are) pursued in the hopes of diversifying exports, enhancing the so-called 18 “They Think We Can Manufacture Crops” | 19 private sector, and improving the welfare of small farmers by linking them with transnational firms (Helleiner 2002; World Bank 2007a). in its most basic terms, contract farming (cf) involves the production of a commodity by a farmer under an agreement with a buyer, usually an agribusiness firm or food processor, at an agreed price and quantity. it has long dominated the agrarian landscape in high-income countries, such as the United states, but in the 1990s it was a relatively recent innovation in sub-saharan africa, where it remains both widely praised and strongly criticized (see little and Watts 1994; Glover and Kusterer 1990; sautier et al. 2006). in africa cf operations sometimes are married with the production and trade of an ntc, which is defined as “a product that has not been produced in a particular country before . . . [or] was traditionally produced for domestic production but is now being exported” (Barham et al. 1992: 43). Usaid alone supported more than twenty-five ntc programs in africa during the 1990s that focused on niche markets, such as french beans, spices, and mangoes and pineapples, and ofen involved a contract farming model of production and marketing (little and dolan 2000; Ghana Private-Public Partnership food industry development Program 2003). like the community-based conservation programs that will be discussed in chapter 3, these ventures seemed like “winwin ” situations: low-income african farmers gain access to advanced technologies and high-income markets, and private corporations and governments profit from cheap labor, abundant land, and favorable growing conditions. despite a very mixed record of delivering benefits to farmers in africa, contract farming of ntcs is viewed as a “fresh hope for africa’s declining agriculture ” (World agroforestry centre/nEPad 2007: 1). in this chapter, i examine the experiences of contract farming of ntcs in the Banjul (The Gambia) and accra regions (Ghana) of West africa, both sites where horticultural exports and cf were strongly advocated and backed by international financial institutions and development agencies. in the early 1990s both countries were undergoing major economic reform and export diversification programs, and contract farming of ntcs was seen as integral to these efforts. similar ntc programs were taking place in several other countries on the continent at the time, including Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe...

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