Abstract:
The recent increase in farmland investments in developing countries by private equity funds, large
multinationals and sometimes foreign governments has attracted widespread attention and strong
emotions from various interest groups. A major criticism of such investments is how they often
marginalise smallholder farmers, as it is often not part of the investment plans to engage with these
farmers. There is, however, little empirical evidence to support such claims. Using evidence from
three large-scale farmland investors in Zambia, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of different
types of engagement dynamics and linkages between large-scale farmland investors and smallholder
farmers, and employs the propensity score-matching method to estimate the impact of such
engagement on the production outcomes of smallholder farmers. The results indicate that farmers
who are deliberately engaged by investors perform better in terms of hybrid seed and fertiliser usage,
and subsequently have a higher gross value per hectare of crops than those who are not.
