Interest in contract farming as a mechanism to coordinate linkages between farmers and agribusiness firms has grown considerably in the recent past, in large part because of the international trends towards tighter alignment in agrifood supply chains. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been responding to this growing demand for information and technical support on contract farming issues by means of actions that include a series of capacity building workshops on planning and implementing contract farming operations, the dissemination of knowledge through the Contract Farming Resource Centre and the development of publications on conceptual, operational and legal aspects of contract farming.

Building on the above, FAO has prepared this training toolkit on Operational and Legal Aspects of Contract Farming Schemes (CF Training) to offer trainer support and learning materials designed to introduce sustainable principles and tools for contract farming to government officials including law and policy makers, development practitioners, leaders of farmer organizations, professionals from the private agribusiness sector, non-governmental organizations (NGO) and other persons with an interest in contract farming.