New laws that are designed to protect small businesses from falling victim to unfair contract terms may help tip the balance of power back in favour of smaller farmers, especially when it comes to innovations involving data.

In November 2016, Australia’s current regime of protection against unfair contract terms for consumers will be extended to cover unfair terms in standard pre-printed form contracts for small business. I am studying the impact of these changes on the multitude of standard form contracts that farmers deal with on a daily basis, particularly contracts associated with digital agriculture.

It won't be too long before we see swarms of autonomous, collision-avoiding agri-bots, driverless tractors and drones in use on farms. These digital technologies bring undeniable opportunities for productivity gains to farmers.

However, for each digital farming technology adopted, a standard form “Terms of Use” agreement is entered into by the farmers. This regulates the collection and aggregation of the farm data by the technology.

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