Role of Contract Farming in Crop Diversification and Employment Generation: Empirical Evidence from Indian Punjab

Pavneet Kaur, Naresh Singla and Sukhpal Singh

Millennial Asia, 2021, vol. 12, issue 3, 350-366

Abstract: Linking small farmers with modern agri-business firms through contract farming is viewed as one of the several ways to achieve crop diversification and enhance farmers’ income, besides bringing spill-over effects of such interventions for other local stakeholders like farm workers. This article examines the role of contract farming in crop diversification and employment generation in the context of Indian Punjab. Based on a sample of 50 contract farmers and 50 non-contract farmers for three firms each, the study shows that contract farming brings crop diversification and generates farm labour employment, particularly for women, due to the high value and labour-intensive nature of crops being grown under such arrangements. But, there exists a gender gap in wages and gendering of tasks, which demand policy and corporate attention besides regulatory oversight to achieve more equitable and pro-poor impact of contract farming.

Keywords: Diversification; employment; contract farming; gender; agrarian crises; Indian Punjab (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09763996211051300 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:millen:v:12:y:2021:i:3:p:350-366

DOI: 10.1177/09763996211051300

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Millennial Asia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().