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Model Agreement for Responsible Contract Farming

A simple and practical legal tool for buyers and producers to improve their business relations and to help make responsible agricultural investment a reality.

The Model Agreement for Responsible Contract Farming was developed by IISD and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in collaboration with UNIDROIT, drawing from the principles of the UNIDROIT/FAO/IFAD Legal Guide on Contract Farming.

The Model Agreement is a simple and practical legal tool for buyers and producers to improve their business relations and to help make responsible agricultural investment a reality. It can help address power asymmetries, create more equitable and sustainable business relationships and support a transparent business environment for contract farming schemes. The Model Agreement provides simple, customizable template provisions that can be adapted by the parties to suit the commodity, context and parties’ specific needs. 

The Model Agreement for Responsible Contract Farming provides an overview of some of the key legal issues in contract farming and explains each of the provisions. The customizable template is an easy-to-use Word document that can be downloaded and customized. The tomato and coffee templates illustrate how to adapt the Model Agreement for specific crops.

Example customizable templates – tomatoes and coffee.

Additional resources for responsible contract farming: