Contract farming and smallholder farmers' resilience to climate change and variability in northern Ghana

Social and biophysical vulnerability of agriculture to climate change has increased exponentially in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). Although contract farming (CF) schemes have burgeoned in developing countries as a resilience-building strategy for smallholder farmers, there is a lack of empirical evidence to show how and why CF enhances smallholder farmers' resilience to climate change in SSA. This paper combines theoretical insights from climate change adaptation literature with qualitative data to explore three CF schemes implemented in northern Ghana to find out whether or not they enhance smallholder farmers' resilience to climate change. The results show that smallholder farmers perceived a change in climate parameters, namely declining rainfall, uneven rainfall distribution and rising temperatures, leading to reduced agricultural yields. In response, smallholder farmers have implemented three CF schemes, which vary, not only in terms of crops cultivated but in terms of the contractual arrangement, as a resilience-building strategy to the changing climate. The CF schemes provided material and non-material resources to participating farmers and enhanced their resilience to climate change better than non-contract farmers. Contrarily, depending on how production risks are distributed in the schemes studied, CF can undermine the resilience of smallholder farmers. Ultimately, the paper provides critical insights on how to design and implement CF schemes to enhance the resilience of agrarian societies in the face of increasing climate change in SSA and beyond.