Over the past century or so, a wideassortment of pre-harvest agreements, joint ventures, deals,and pledges that can be termed contract farming have beenbrokered between farmers and buyers. During the 1980s and1990s, contract farming was frequently criticized as apotentially exploitative arrangement, which favored the morepowerful buyer and left the small-scale farmer and theenvironment vulnerable to abuse. More recently, there isrenewed interest from policy makers and their developmentpartners in contract farming as a means of leveraging therecent wave of large-scale investment in land andagriculture to include small-scale farmers and to link themto new market opportunities. The establishment of contractfarming becomes a means to link small-scale farmers tomarkets, which may otherwise be inaccessible for reasons ofdistance, standards, processing, or any of the otherdisconnections and impediments that hold them back. However,there have been few attempts to evaluate donor-supportedcontract farming projects, either financially oreconomically, or to measure their inclusiveness and theirimpact in the community. This document aims to provide atask team leader with tools for a critical evaluation ofprojects promoting contract farming schemes before, during,and after the life span of the project. This toolkit hasthree objectives: provide guidance on what kinds of contractfarming schemes work well, and in what circumstances (thebest practice function); provide guidance on how to analyzeinclusive contract farming schemes in order to identifythose with a good chance of success and sustainability - theright horse to back (the diagnostic function); and provide aframework for applying socio-economic and financial analysisto operations that support such schemes (the cost-benefit function).
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