There is relatively less disagreement today about what contract farming means or indeed, why it emerges in the first place. Yet, there is deep disagreement on whether contract farming is a “good thing”. At one end of the spectrum, contract farming is seen as a vehicle for smallholders in developing countries to take advantage of opportunities that a globalizing trade system has to offer, notably, in non-traditional high-value crops. On the opposite end, many claim that it supplants traditional structures of production and exchange in a way that produces more iniquitous power relations, exacerbating social differentiation and even proletarianizing the independent farmer. The central premise of this work is that methodological differences, especially across disciplines, have generated a false binary in discussions of contract farming, whereas a more integrated theoretical perspective can reconcile these apparently conflicting positions. This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book.