Honourable guests, delegates and ladies and gentlemen, I feel privileged and humbled to be asked to preside over this conference of the ISAM and deliver its presidential address. I am thankful to the Society especially Professor Mahendra Dev, Dr. T Satyanarayana and the entire executive committee for inviting me to shoulder this responsibility. I have always engaged with the society (ISAM), frequently participating in its annual conferences including being its vice-president, member of the EC, and rapporteur, and delivering memorial and special lectures, and with the IJAM as a member of the editorial board, reviewer and author. I am aware of the many stalwarts who have delivered this presidential address and many of them have been my mentors, teachers, friends and colleagues. I would also like to place on record my gratitude to the ISEC, Bangalore and its former Professor, Dr. Vinod Vyasulu, and the CDS, Thiruvananthapuram, particularly its former faculty Dr. Mridul Eapen and Dr. Raman Mahadevan for shaping me as a researcher. The University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bangalore is a familiar place due to my stay in Bangalore for four years during the 1990s and later when I sought its help for data collection with my research on food supermarkets. For this address, I have chosen to speak on contract farming as it has been my first academic and policy love. I have been looking at the theory and practice of contract farming for almost three decades now in terms of its understanding, teaching, training, and policy aspects at various levels. I have analysed more than three dozen contracts and carried out dozens of field studies in India and Thailand, during this period. I hope you will find this address of some academic and policy value. The sustainability concerns in agribusiness and the triple bottom line approach to business, in general, have * Presidential address delivered at the 38th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Marketing at the Institute of Agribusiness Management, UAS Bengaluru, January 9-11, 2025. www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 103.141.126.2 on dated 29-Jul-2025 Ind. Jour. Agril. Mktg., 39(1), Conf.Spl., 2025 3 led to a focus on responsible business models and practices. That is quite a movement away from inclusive business models advocated by FAO a few years ago (FAO, 2015). Today, there is responsibility focus across a range of sectors and activities in agribusiness, from research and innovation, including crop residue burning (Prasad, 2020; Pandey, 2020; and Mamidipudi and Frahm, 2020), farm inputs and technology (Oke, 2020), to value chain interventions (Vicol et al, 2018) including contract farming (hereafter CF) practice and models (FAO, 2012; FAO and IISD, 2018). Of course, earlier, some of these concerns were expressed and, to some extent, addressed by global alternative trade movements like fair trade, organic farming and trade, and ethical trade, and more recently, sustainability initiatives like better cotton initiative (BCI) and better sugarcane initiative (SSI). In this context, the emerging concept and frameworks of Responsible CF (RCF) deserve attention as this is parallel to the literature on regulating CF which has been in place for decades as has been the practice of CF even in developing countries. In this address, I examine the issue of voluntary compliance (i.e. RCF) versus CF regulation. In the second section, empirical evidence on issues in the practice of contracts w.s.r. to India is analysed. In the third section. I discuss the FAO concept of RCF and its limitations and the model CF agreements. I then examine the regulatory issues and possibilities, specifically focussing on the Indian experience of framing law on CF and its limitations in smallholder context from a RCF angle in the fourth section. I conclude the address with regulatory ways forward for ensuring fairness, sustainability, and equity of livelihoods in smallholder CF practice.
