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Even though many studies identify positive effects of contract farming (CF) on the livelihood of farmers, the use of CF as a tool to increase farm performance is unsettled debate. Information on CF is relatively not available in staple food chains. Theoretical considerations have shown that there are challenges in employing CF in staple food chains such as rice. With the increasing trend of rice CF in Ghana, it is very critical to establish its performance in rice production in Ghana. It is therefore imperative to analyse the impact of CF on the performance of smallholder rice farmers.

A survey was conducted where 350 rice farmers selected through a stratified sampling technique using structured questionnaires were interviewed. Descriptive and inferential statistics including stochastic frontier analyses and endogenous treatment effect regression were used to analyse the data.

The results from the endogenous treatment effect regression model show that CF improves rice farmers' technical, allocative and economic efficiencies by 21, 23 and 26%, respectively. Farm size and CF were identified as common factors influencing technical, allocative and economic efficiency measures of the farmers positively. It further identified age of farmer, educational level and household labour as factors influencing farmers' participation in CF positively.

It is recommended that CF is a good tool to enhance rice production efficiency, and hence, farmers should be encouraged to participate in CF as strategy to enhance the local rice production in Ghana.

The outcome of this study has the potential to influence rice production in the country. The country is a net importer of rice and just about 35% self-sufficient in rice production.

This study is the first to assess performance of CF in rice crop production in Ghana and also one of the few to use efficiency as a performance measure.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an empirical analysis of contract farming (CF) for poultry in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India.

Through a probit equation, the factors that matter to their participation in contracting are evaluated. The estimation of income gains is considered within a treatment effects model. The risk benefits from contracting are estimated by simulating the variability of returns if the contract farmers were to be independent growers.

This paper shows that the poultry integrators in Andhra Pradesh are able to appropriate almost the entire efficiency gains from contracting. Yet, the contract growers are better off with the contract. This outcome is because of grower heterogeneity and the way it is employed in the selection of contract growers. The paper also finds that contract growers do gain substantially in terms of risk reduction.

The CF literature reminds us that these arrangements often fail because of opportunistic behavior. The poultry example shows that contracting is a useful institution when processor interests are closely aligned to that of the grower. This paper describes the circumstances under which this alignment is obtained.

First, it adds to the small and growing body of work that estimates the income gains to contract growers. Second and going beyond existing work on developing countries, this paper also addresses the risk benefits from contracting. Thirdly, this paper estimates the income gains from contracting to the processing firms.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the benefits to farmers from using alternative marketing arrangements (AMAs) in the USA. The authors first estimate a behavioral model explaining farmers' joint decisions on which commodities to produce and which marketing channels to use when selling their outputs. The authors then use the estimated model to quantify the benefits to farmers from using AMAs.

The authors use the discrete choice random utility maximization model to examine farmers' choices on production regimes, where a regime is defined as a possible combination of all the individual commodity/marketing arrangement channels that the farmer can choose to use. The farmer is assumed to compare the utilities he gets from each of the possible production regimes and then selects the production regime that yields the highest utility to him. The benefit of having access to a particular AMA is measured as the negative of the welfare loss associated with forcing the farmer to abandon that particular AMA.

The results indicate that AMAs yield an economically significant amount of benefits to farmers who rely on them to market their outputs. At the national level, the benefit of using production contracts to hog farmers is valued at $336.4 million. The benefits of using marketing contracts are valued at $374.2, $156.6 and $92.1 million for corn, soybeans and wheat producers.

The paper is the first study that uses the farm-level data to study the welfare effects of marketing contracts in the grain sector. The results show that considering a multi-enterprises farm, farmers' welfare loss might be smaller when the hog production contract is no longer existed.

This paper aims to develop a coordination mechanism that can be applied to achieve the channel coordination and information sharing simultaneously in the fresh agri-food supply chain with uncertain demand. It seeks to elucidate how the producer can use an option contract to transfer the risk caused by uncertain demand, impel the retailer to share demand information and improve the performance of supply chain.

An option contract model based on the basic model of fresh agri-food supply chain is introduced to compare the production, profit, risk and information sharing condition of the supply chain in different cases. In addition, a case study focusing on the sale of autumn peaches produced by a local producer is investigated, which provides evidence of the applicability of the authors’ approach.

The optimal option contract can help the supply chain achieve channel coordination and reach Pareto improvement. In the meantime, such a contract will encourage the retailer to share market demand information with producer spontaneously and help maintain the strategic cooperation between two parties.

This paper considers a single-producer, single-retailer system and both of them are risk neutral.

Presented results can be used as suggestions for improving the contract design of fresh agri-food supply chain in China and can also provide references for other countries with similar experiences as China in fresh agri-food production.

This research introduces the option contract into fresh agri-food supply chain and takes information sharing and the risk caused by uncertain demand into consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple model to demonstrate how a trade‐off between incomplete contract distortions and excessive governance costs determine an agricultural firm's organizational choices.

In this paper, it is argued that the perishable nature of products exaggerates the incomplete contract distortion, such that products with a short biological production cycle (e.g. eggs) are likely to be operated under vertical integration, products with a medium cycle (e.g. poultry) are likely to be operated under product contracts, and products with a long cycle (e.g. pork) are likely to be operated under marketing contracts.

This model helps explain why vertical integration dominates the US egg industry, why product contracts are prevalent in the turkey industry, and why marketing contracts have become common in the pork industry. The implications from this model are also applicable to other sectors and other countries, including China's agricultural sectors.

This paper illustrates that perishable products are more vulnerable to opportunism, because the incomplete contract distortion is exaggerated by the perishable nature of the products. However, a local government can reshape firms' choices of vertical coordination by improving its legal infrastructure to reduce the incomplete contract distortions and then weaken the role of the perishable nature of products, so that contracting (product or marketing) may take place. Note that agricultural producers benefit more in selling their products through product/marketing contracts than spot markets.

Farmers' risk attitudes and risk perceptions play an essential role in shaping risk management strategies to address risks and uncertainties. Contract farming is considered as one of the feasible approaches to tackle farmers' concerns. However, risk perspectives under various categories have not been included in studies on farmers' preferences for contract farming in the literature, especially in Vietnam. This study aims to determine factors affecting farmers' choices of different contract farming practices.

The explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and multinomial logit model (MNL) were applied to explore the impacts of risk perspectives on farmers' preferences for contract farming. Data have been collected from 211 rice farmers in An Giang Province, “the rice bowl” of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

The study found that farm size, cooperatives, extension, market access and trust have significantly impacted on contract participation while a delay payment was a barrier for farmers' motivation to opt for the contract. Farmers' contract choices were also influenced by their risk attitudes and perceptions under different risk dimensions. The financial, policy and human risk-averse behavior predisposed farmers to single out the full contract while the policy and human risk-loving and production, market and finance risk-averse respondents were in favor of the marketing contract. Moreover, the findings indicated that the more farmers concerned about risk of weather and market, the more choices for the full contract, whereas the risk perceptions of weather and policy encouraged farmers to use the limited contract. By contrast, farmers who perceived the impacts of risk of diseases/pests and human were likely to adopt the marketing contract.

This study just focuses on collecting data from farmers’ perspective. Future studies involving stakeholders such as enterprises and policy makers are strongly recommended so as to design suitable contracts and enforce contract schemes effectively in Vietnam.

The findings also contribute to the literature on different types of contracts and the multidimensional aspect of risk for rice production in Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure of contractual arrangements in mango orchards and factors affecting the mango contract design in India.

The study is based on personal structured questionnaire survey of 83 contractors in one of the major mango growing areas in India. A snowball sampling approach was adopted to select suitable respondents for the study. Descriptive statistics have been computed to understand the contractor’s response on contract attributes. Factor analysis was used to categorize the contractors’ responses on various attributes of the mango contract. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to determine the factors affecting the contract decisions.

The study identifies nine aspects of mango contracting covering orchard owner, orchard and contract management characteristics. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to assess the factors affecting the contractor’s decision on the time of entering into mango contracting, i.e. pre-flowering or post-flowering stage. Regression analysis results clearly indicate that contractors who prefer pre-flowering contracts pay significantly higher attention to contract management attributes. On the other hand, those contractors who normally enter in contract once the mango trees have flowered are more likely to pay attention to orchard-related features.

Specifically, the results have implications for contract terms, contract efficiency and effectiveness and overall performance. Finally, the study provides suggestions for a future research agenda to analyze mango production contracts.

Though contracting in mango growing is a common phenomena, there is limited analysis on identifying the key contract attributes and factors affecting the contract structure.

This study aims to examine a large, non-disclosed production contract awarded to Lockheed Corp. in the context of a trade-off between a contractually required non-disclosure clause and the need (as a publicly traded firm) to disclose material information to its shareholders. This production contract generated significant cash flows to the firm as evidenced by growth in its earnings. However, the existence of the production contract and its contribution to Lockheed’s earnings, was not disclosed by the firm to shareholders and potential investors while the production contract was being executed.

The authors examine the market reaction to several key contract events which were not disclosed at the time they occurred, in compliance with the contractually required non-disclosure clause.

A statistically significant stock price reaction around the time of the award of this non-public contract, indicative of trading by some capital market participants using non-public information was documented.

Because similar large non-public contracts funded by the government are common in the industrial economy, we conclude by discussing implications for organizational structure, firm’s cost of capital, equity-based compensation and market efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the coordination mechanism of cost sharing for green food production and marketing between a food producer and a supplier who both contribute to the sales of green food.

This paper first develops demand functions for both a food supplier and a producer, considering their influence on green degree of food and associated consumers’ acceptances. Then, cost-sharing contracts-based game models are proposed. At last, regarding to optimal supply chain profits and green performance, the proposed contracts and the non-coordination situation are compared and tested by a real case.

When green cost is only shared by one side, the cost-sharing contracts cannot optimally coordinate the food supply chain, but it can improve profits for both the supplier and producer. When consumers’ sensitivity to the green degree of food increases, a mutual cost-sharing contract will bring more profits for both the supplier and producer than those under the non-coordination mode in a decentralized supply chain situation. A real case verifies the conclusions.

The models are in complete information, and the market demand is assumed to be linear to sales price. Mutual cost sharing is only for material processing and food production, which can be extended to include sharing for sales cost. Coordination ideas on the proposed contracts development and solutions for optimal decisions can be applied in the other industries.

The study shows that coordination between a supplier and a producer is needed to improve the food supply chain’s green performance.

This paper first extends the existing profit functions by considering the green efforts of both a supplier and a producer as well as their effects on green degree of products and consumers’ acceptances to the green degree.

Regarding the global development of the wine industry, China has gained a notable share in terms of wine consumption, and its domestic wine production has increased steadily since 2000. The wine production process requires close coordination between growers and processors to avoid disruption and instability in the supply chain of the wine grapes. However, vertical coordination in the Chinese wine regions has received little attention. Based on the existing theoretical background on vertical coordination, this study aims to detect the evolution processes of vertical coordination in the Chinese grape market.

Exploratory qualitative research fits with the aim of this study. From December 2018 to January 2019, interviews with grape growers and wine processors of various Chinese wine-producing areas took place. After transcribing all recorded files into text, a qualitative data analysis following the approach of Mayring (2015) was used to analyse and interpret the data.

The models of vertical coordination in the grape supply in China vary between the producer's requirements on grape quality/quantity and the arrangements of grape supply chains, which are diverse depending on regional strategies of the local government.

However, in this research, the authors did not get into details on the organization of the contractual coordination, and due to the limited access to grape growers, the relationship between farmers and processors cannot be analysed in detail. With a better understanding of the coordination relationship and enhanced contract enforcement, the vineyard management and grape supply chain management can be better performed, inducing a steady industrial development.

Regarding the global development of the wine industry, China has gained a notable share in terms of wine consumption, and its domestic wine production has increased steadily since 2000. However, vertical coordination in the Chinese wine regions has received little attention. The study provides a first insight into the grape market structures, as very little is known.