Expanding through Precarity

Abstract Since the early 2000s, border regions of Russian Far East have seen rapid growth in large-scale Chinese agriculture through contract-farming arrangements. This article, drawing on archival and ethnographic findings, focuses contract relations between agribusinesses small farmers as a labour regime, unusual context. It argues that practices informal subcontracting, mediation governance underlie this regime produce precarity for farmers, shifting to them natural human risks agricultural production Russia. The article points out managers large companies used discipline dispossess direct producers.