Human Rights Due Diligence in Agriculture: From Compliance to Impact

Why Agriculture Is Central to Human Rights Risk

Agriculture sits at the heart of global human rights risk. It employs hundreds of millions of people, many of them informal, migrant, or family workers. It operates in remote regions with weak governance, limited oversight, and entrenched inequality. Land, labor, gender, and power intersect daily in farming systems.

As a result, some of the most severe human rights risks — child labor, forced labor, unsafe working conditions, land dispossession, discrimination, and poverty wages — are concentrated in agricultural supply chains. Addressing these risks is not optional. It is foundational to ethical, resilient, and legally compliant food systems.

The Rise of Mandatory Due Diligence

Human rights due diligence has moved rapidly from voluntary guidance to legal requirement. Frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance have laid the foundation. New regulations — including the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive — are transforming expectations.

Companies are now expected not only to identify risks, but to prevent, mitigate, and remediate harm. Crucially, responsibility extends beyond direct operations into supply chains. For agriculture, this means confronting risks embedded at farm level, where visibility is lowest and complexity is highest.

Compliance is no longer about policy statements. It is about demonstrable impact.

Why Checklists Fail in Agriculture

Traditional compliance models struggle in agriculture. Audit-based approaches often capture surface-level indicators while missing systemic drivers of harm. Risks may be documented repeatedly without being reduced. Farmers and workers may comply temporarily under inspection, only to revert once auditors leave.

This failure is not due to lack of effort, but to a mismatch between tools and reality. Agricultural human rights risks are deeply linked to income insecurity, land tenure, gender norms, and climate vulnerability. They cannot be eliminated through monitoring alone.

Effective due diligence must therefore move beyond checklists toward structural change.

Human Rights and Livelihoods Are Inseparable

Many human rights risks in agriculture stem from economic pressure. When farmers earn below a living income, they may rely on unpaid family labor or child labor. When workers earn below a living wage, unsafe or exploitative conditions persist. When land rights are insecure, communities are displaced without remedy.

Treating human rights as isolated violations obscures their root causes. Protecting rights requires addressing livelihoods, power imbalances, and access to resources. In agriculture, social sustainability and economic sustainability are inseparable.

From Risk Identification to Risk Reduction

Meaningful human rights due diligence focuses on outcomes, not just processes. This means prioritizing the most severe risks, engaging directly with affected stakeholders, and tracking whether harm is actually reduced over time.

For agriculture, this requires long-term engagement with producers, workers, and communities. It means strengthening grievance mechanisms that are accessible and trusted. It means integrating human rights considerations into sourcing strategies, not confining them to CSR departments.

Due diligence succeeds when it changes conditions on the ground, not when it generates reports.

The Role of Shared Responsibility

No single actor can eliminate human rights risks in agriculture alone. Farmers operate within market systems they do not control. Buyers influence prices, standards, and timelines. Governments shape labor laws, land tenure systems, and enforcement capacity.

Human rights due diligence therefore requires shared responsibility. Companies must align purchasing practices with human rights expectations. Governments must enforce protections. Investors must reward long-term value creation over short-term extraction.

Where responsibility is shifted downward without support, risks persist. Where it is shared, progress becomes possible.

Why Credible Due Diligence Strengthens Business

Strong human rights due diligence is often framed as a cost or constraint. In reality, it strengthens supply chains. Reducing labor risk lowers operational disruption. Secure land rights stabilize sourcing regions. Fair treatment builds trust and long-term partnerships.

As regulatory scrutiny and litigation risk increase, companies that invest in credible due diligence are better positioned to adapt. Those that rely on superficial compliance face growing legal, financial, and reputational exposure.

Human rights due diligence is therefore not only about avoiding harm — it is about building resilient, future-ready supply chains.

Why the Time for Impact Is Now

The convergence of regulatory pressure, investor scrutiny, and civil society expectations has created a turning point. Companies that delay action risk being overtaken by compliance requirements they are unprepared to meet.

At the same time, agricultural communities face escalating pressure from climate change, rising costs, and demographic shifts. Without intentional action, human rights risks will intensify rather than diminish.

This moment demands a shift from procedural compliance to real-world impact.

Conclusion: Due Diligence as Transformation

Human rights due diligence in agriculture must evolve from a defensive exercise into a driver of systemic improvement. Compliance is necessary, but insufficient. What matters is whether farmers, workers, and communities experience safer conditions, fairer treatment, and greater security.

When due diligence is embedded into how food systems function — how value is shared, how risks are managed, how voices are heard — it becomes a force for positive change. In agriculture, that transformation is not just possible; it is essential.

About the Sustainable Agriculture Network

The Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) is a global impact network transforming agriculture into a force for good — healing and nourishing our extraordinary planet. Together with 37 member organizations across more than 120 countries, SAN advances sustainable, equitable, and climate-resilient farming systems that empower communities and restore nature.

Through radical collaboration, SAN connects farmers, businesses, researchers, and civil society to co-create solutions that tackle the world’s most pressing challenges — from climate change and biodiversity loss to social inequity. Our network’s collective efforts have already helped transform over 40 million hectares of farmland, driving measurable progress toward regenerative and inclusive food systems.

Rooted in integrity, inclusivity, curiosity, empathy, adaptability, and evidence-based action, SAN leads with both urgency and hope. We envision a future where agriculture heals, communities thrive, and nature flourishes.

Learn more at www.sustainableagriculture.eco