ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to develop an analytical framework to examine the economic and political empowerment of contract farming (CF) and provides a framework with which to assess the efficacy of sunflower CF in Kongwa District in the central parts of Tanzania. It deals with an elaboration of the notion of empowerment and CF as a means to empower smallholders, followed by a presentation of the analytical framework, which draws on P. Utting’s empowerment model. During the late 1990s, the World Bank advocated the concept of empowerment and the notion of farmer empowerment is an integral part of many international and national development agencies’ policies for supporting agricultural and rural development. In the case of the sunflower CF in Kongwa District, building up trust between the parties as a motivation for the successful execution of a contract is probably more feasible than formal written contracts with no enforcement mechanism.
