Let's talk corporates! Namely PepsiCo!
In the early 90's PepsiCo wanted to see soft drinks in India. At that time, only CocoCola had managed to get into the Indian market and they had pretty much taken over.
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GOI set the condition, that PepsiCo must also open up a food processing plants in India. So, PepsiCo moved into Punjab and set up contracts with local farmers for tomatoes and chilli which they were able to use for their sister company PizzaHut.
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Then in the late 90's, PepsiCo sold/closed the factories and just decided that they were no longer going to do contract farming in Punjab. BUT during this time they had also entered into contract farming in Gujarat for potatoes.
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The potatoes were for PepsiCo sister company, Lays. And the issues were that majority of the contracts were verbal, second, if the crop didn't meet PepsiCo standard, they wouldn't buy it. The only loser in this situation was the farmer.
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These quality checks were ways for the company middleman to make some money via bribes. Bribes would sometimes be 2-4 lakh rupees, this would devastate a small farmer.
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So eventually what ended up happening was that Lays would only go into contract with bigger farmers - and if they ever did work with medium/small farmers then it ended up being harder for them to break even.
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On top of everything else, to get into the company, you needed a gate pass. And this gateposts was only given to people who were "servile", those that were willing to go the extra mile to please the company.The farmers would be so (con't)
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frustrated that they would just dump the potatoes on the street. Also, PepsiCo would purposely give out inadequate seeds & sell seedlings to non contract farmers so there was always a surplus of crop and they could keep the prices low.
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Also, PepsiCo was supposed to open up ~7 bottling facilities in Punjab and thus far their has only been one.
What's the lesson? Corporates and Farmers don't mix.
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So here's the other thing. When the farmers tried to sell the potatoes elsewhere, PepsiCo tried to sue them because they owned the seeds. Yeh they withdrew their case but we have to understand that this is where and how farmers get stuck.
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https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/10/14/lessons-from-punjab-will-contract-farming-benefit-or-harm-indian-farmers