Abstract:
Contract farming (CF) promises many benefits for sugarcane outgrowers in many cases.
However, studies debate on whether sugarcane smallholder farmers get quality services from
CF relations. As a response to the debates, this paper provides a systematic analysis of two
issues critical to the performance of sugarcane contract farming in Kilombero Valley: the
extent to which farmers are satisfied with the services received through farmers’ associations
and the satisfaction status of farmers on contract farming services the sugarcane buyer offers.
The paper also determines the associations between farmers’ views on satisfaction with CF
services and their household characteristics. The paper adopted a cross-sectional study design
in which 300 outgrower farmers were interviewed. Data were analysed using IBM Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics, and Microsoft Excel. The paper used SERVQUAL
model, adapted to the sugarcane contract farming context. Through the model, five dimensions
(tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) were tested to find gaps that
exist among some smallholder farmers regarding perceived and expected quality in the CF
services coordinated by farmers’ associations. The results demonstrate that empathy was the
most deficient dimension of contract farming services quality. Also, there were high deficiencies
on quality control, price setting as well as weighing sugarcane consignments at the Mills’ gates.
Cross tabulation and chi-square test revealed that there was a significant relationship between
satisfaction with the timing of payment for the sugarcane they sold and household size. It is
recommended that empathy should be tackled first by the farmers’ associations before other
dimensions. Both farmers’ associations and the buyer should be active initiators of cane supply
agreements
