L’agricultrice et son époux : Innovations juridiques pour les femmes dans l’agriculture contractuelle

The policy brief examines how women are often excluded from contract farming agreements despite providing the majority of the labor, and how contract crops often displace the subsistence crops women manage. It suggests adapting legal principles from consumer protection, franchising, and mortgage laws to ensure women's consent, informed participation, and direct access to benefits within agricultural contracts.

• Women are frequently excluded from signing contract farming agreements despite performing a significant portion of the work. For example, in a study of 39 large-scale agro-industrial investments in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, women represented only 1.5% of independent producers.
• Contract farming often leads to the displacement of subsistence crops, which are primarily cultivated by women to feed their households, potentially harming household food and nutritional security. Examples include tobacco displacing millet in East Africa and rice interfering with women's sorghum cultivation.
• The document proposes that laws should require buyers to actively seek the consent of spouses who may be affected by a contract, even if they are not the primary title holder. It suggests that a contract should be invalid if the spouse's signature is missing, providing an incentive for inclusion.
• To ensure informed consent, the brief suggests implementing mandatory disclosure requirements, such as a 'summary of key terms' page and standard warnings in a visible font, similar to consumer protection laws in the US and Australia.
• The brief suggests that legal frameworks should allow for the attribution of rights to third parties. This would enable women who are not formal parties to the contract—but who provide significant labor or manage subsistence crops—to receive payments directly and enforce contract benefits.
• While contractual and legal tools are useful, they cannot solve structural barriers such as women's lack of access to land, capital, and representation in farmers' organizations, which require broader policy reforms.

APA

Brewin, S., & Murphy, S. (2019). L’agricultrice et son époux : Innovations juridiques pour les femmes dans l’agriculture contractuelle. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/women-contract-farming-policy-brief-fr.pdf

Chicago

Brewin, Sarah, and Sophia Murphy. L’agricultrice et son époux : Innovations juridiques pour les femmes dans l’agriculture contractuelle. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2019. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/women-contract-farming-policy-brief-fr.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Brewin |first1=Sarah |last2=Murphy |first2=Sophia |title=L’agricultrice et son époux : Innovations juridiques pour les femmes dans l’agriculture contractuelle |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=February 2019 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/women-contract-farming-policy-brief-fr.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{brewin2019lagricultrice, author = {Brewin, Sarah and Murphy, Sophia}, title = {{L’agricultrice et son époux : Innovations juridiques pour les femmes dans l’agriculture contractuelle}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2019}, month = feb, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/women-contract-farming-policy-brief-fr.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }