The "plant and share" contract in Côte d'Ivoire. Incomplete contracting and land conflicts

This paper tackles the broad issue of contract incompleteness, property rights and conflicts in the context of rural Côte d'Ivoire. Since the beginning of the 2000s, a new type of contractual arrangement is developing rapidly: the "Plant & Share" contract. The central principle of this type of arrangement is that the landowner (usually an autochthon) provides the land to a farmer (usually a migrant) who develops a perennial tree crop plantation, i.e., supplies the seedlings, the fertilizers and the labor until production starts. When the plantation starts to produce, three types of sharing arrangements (usually by half, exceptionally 1/3 for the landowner and 2/3 for the farmer) occur, depending on what is shared: (i) the plantation (the landowner retaining his/her ownership right to the land bearing the farmer's part of the plantation); (ii) the plantation and the land (i.e., thru the contract, the farmer builds an ownership right not only on the plantation, but also on the land bearing his share of the plantation); (iii) the production (the land remaining the property of the landowner and the plantation being de facto co-owned by the assignor and the taker). Like most institutional arrangements in rural Côte d'Ivoire, P&S contracts remain usually "informal" in the sense that there is no legal validation of the transaction by a public authority. Beyond their "informal" nature, P&S contracts are quite incomplete. Some elements of the arrangement are rarely or never specified explicitly: the length of the contract, the right to transfer the plantation, the technical process involved in the creation of the plantation, etc. In their current form, P&S contracts therefore convey a real potential for conflicts between landowners and farmers. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into the rationale for the rapid spread of this new institutional arrangement. Its incompleteness is discussed as well as its potentially conflictive features. The paper also shows how this contract, in spite of its incompleteness, constitutes an alternative to much more conflictive land "sales" that currently dominate the land transfers market in the country. A discussion of the socio-political embeddedness of contractual practices is thus provided. Aside from the authors' long time field research investment in Côte d'Ivoire, the paper draws on data coming from two sources: a survey realized by F. Ruf in 2001 (600 farms), and a survey realized by J.-Ph. Colin in 2008 (269 farms). (résumé d'auteur)

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Colin, Jean-Philippe, Ruf, François
Format:	conference_item biblioteca
Language:	eng
Published:	s.n.
Subjects:	E11 - Économie et politique foncières,
Online Access:	http://agritrop.cirad.fr/556492/ http://agritrop.cirad.fr/556492/1/document_556492.pdf
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