Can linking small- and large-scale Farmers enhance adaptive Capacity? - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 152

laudable, the research suggests that investments in schooling, road and irrigation
infrastructure at KPL are vulnerable to existing climate variability and change.
Periodic flooding makes the seasonal road to the estate impassable, and in 2011,
forced its closure for two months, cutting off access to fuel and equipment
supplies (Coleman 2011). According to households in Mgudeni, a sub-village
of Mkangawalo, the estate's drainage infrastructure aggravated the impacts
of the 2011 flooding, leading to inundation of farmers' homes, fields and the
school that had been constructed with KPL community development funds.
Moreover, KPL's profitability depends on harvesting two rice crops per year
(NORAD 2013: 96). This will require irrigation from a river whose water-flow
varies seasonally and which according to irrigation experts, like other rivers in
the Kilombero Valley, is already being affected by climate change (Mavere 2012).
These findings show that MSE and KPL OG schemes have been enhancing
communities' adaptive capacities by investing in infrastructure that can improve
households' access to healthcare services, education and markets. However,
these investments will need to take into account the projected impacts of climate
variability and change, and plan accordingly.
Institutions
OG schemes consist of a range of formal and informal relations, rules and
incentives, not least the contract itself, which defines the formal production-
marketing relationship between smallholders and large estates. In addition to
functioning as institutions in their own right, KPL and MSE OG schemes
foster new institutions, as well as being impacted by informal institutions,
market mechanisms and formal institutions at higher levels. While the
contract defines the formal production and marketing relationship between
smallholders and the two estates, the existence of KPL and MSE and the
possibility for farmers to engage in contract production has promoted the
development of OG associations that provide various benefits for smallholder
farmers. These benefits include the possibility of participating in agricultural
training, accessing extension advice, and enhanced voices for smallholders
in negotiations with the estates, as well as being able to engage in political
lobbying at higher levels.
At both KPL and MSE, the bargaining position of OG associations vis-à-vis
the estate is clearly important in determining whether the OG contract is in
smallholders' favour. As shown in previous sections, the existence (or absence)
of alternative markets for the contracted crops plays a key role in determining
farmers' bargaining power. The existence of a parallel local market for rice where
rice prices were higher than those in the contract enabled OG farmers to re-
negotiate the contractual price in their favour. At MSE, the monopsony market
for cane and the absence of an alternative buyer leave farmers in a decidedly
weaker position when it comes to price negotiations. OG cane prices at MSE
lag behind those of its closest competitor in Kilombero District. Farmers must