Gender and contract farming: tea outgrower schemes in Kenya

This article demonstrates the necessity of looking at gender as a major analytical category in the analysis of agricultural development. Contrary to other production systems like plantations and state farms, it is characteristic of smallholder outgrower schemes that their operation is based on the farmers’ control over land and labour. However, this study of smallholder tea production in Kericho District, Kenya shows that men do not automatically control their wives’ labour. In the survey area, one‐third of all tea plots were partly or completely neglected largely because of conflicts between spouses. The problem of low productivity in smallholder tea production is thus intimately linked to the prevailing gender relations in a local community, a factor characteristically ignored by studies of smallholder contract farming which tend to focus narrowly on technical, institutional and economic factors.