Farmers, Industries, and the State: The Culture of Contract Farming in Spain and Japan

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Abstract
Farmers used to grow, process, store, and merchandise food and fiber. Such “agriculture as an industry in and of itself or as a distinct phase of our economy,” however, has long become a legacy of the past (Davis and Goldberg 1957:1). Farmers today stand in relations of growing complexity with various “others” for the purpose of agricultural production, i.e. farm suppliers, banks, research centers, processors, storage operators, distributors, and the government. In other words, farmers work in the complex web of relationships created by all these individuals and institutions. In this context, “contract farming,” a topic of growing interest among social scientists, seems to epitomize, perhaps most clearly, such complex production relations maintained by many farmers today in various corners of the world.