Research Farms Terms of Service

1. Who can use Research Farms

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter contracts. You must provide accurate account information and protect access to your account. You are responsible for activity performed through your account.

2. Marketplace role

Research Farms provides tools that help landowners and farmers find each other, communicate, map land, and prepare lease documents. The landowner and farmer identified in a signed lease are the parties to that lease. A landowner affiliated with the operator of Research Farms can also list property; that owner’s obligations arise from the signed lease. Operating the platform does not make Research Farms a broker, property manager, insurer, surveyor, attorney, escrow agent, or guarantor of a user lease.

3. Listings and landowner responsibilities

A person listing land represents that they own it or have authority to offer it, and that the listing, boundaries, availability, condition, price, permitted uses, and lease terms are accurate and not misleading. Landowners must promptly mark land rented or otherwise unavailable, honor signed leases, and provide access as agreed. They are responsible for required permissions, disclosures, zoning, access rights, environmental conditions, taxes, insurance, security deposits, and compliance with applicable law. Research Farms can remove, pause, or correct listings and request proof of authority.

4. Farmer responsibilities and due diligence

Farmers must independently inspect the property and evaluate title or authority, access, acreage, soil, water, utilities, hazards, environmental conditions, permitted agricultural uses, insurance, licenses, taxes, and suitability. Farmers are responsible for their activities, workers, guests, animals, equipment, permits, and compliance with the signed lease and applicable requirements. Users must obtain professional advice when appropriate. An inquiry is not an acceptance, reservation, or lease.

5. Maps, coordinates, and acreage

Maps, satellite imagery, pins, boundaries, GPS coordinates, and acreage estimates are informational. They can contain errors and are not legal surveys, title records, boundary determinations, environmental reports, or guarantees. Users must resolve discrepancies before signing a lease and use a licensed surveyor when legal boundary certainty is required.

6. Lease Builder

The Lease Builder creates a draft from selections made by a landowner. Generated documents are templates and general information, not legal advice. They are not effective until the landowner and farmer review and sign them. The parties are solely responsible for names, dates, payment terms, property descriptions, disclosures, enforceability, signatures, and local-law requirements. A final signed agreement controls over the listing or generated preview. Research Farms is not a party to, guarantor of, or liable under a user lease.

7. User content

You retain ownership of content you submit. You grant Research Farms a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, format, display, and distribute that content as needed to operate, secure, improve, and promote the Service and your listing. You represent that you have the rights needed to submit it. Research Farms can remove content that violates these Terms or creates risk.

8. Acceptable use

You may not use the Service to misrepresent identity or authority; label rented land available; list land without authority or lawful access; advertise prohibited or hazardous uses; discriminate unlawfully; deceive, harass, threaten, scrape, spam, introduce malware, interfere with security, reverse engineer protected parts of the Service, misuse personal information, evade enforcement, or violate another person’s rights. Users must not use a lease initiated through Research Farms to bypass its checkout. You may not use Research Farms to arrange unlawful cultivation, dumping, pollution, trespass, or other unlawful activity.

9. Communications, payments, refunds, and disputes

Users authorize Research Farms to deliver Service-related communications. Users decide whether to proceed with another user and are responsible for their communications, inspections, leases, performance, and disputes. Payments for leases initiated through the Service must use its Stripe checkout. Stripe Connect processes the payment and transfers the lease payment, including any security deposit, to the landowner’s connected account. Research Farms does not hold a security deposit in escrow. The landowner is responsible for handling and returning deposits under the signed lease and applicable requirements.

Refund eligibility and cancellation rights follow the signed lease and applicable requirements. A checkout cancellation is not a refund of a completed payment. A refund request or card dispute does not automatically terminate a lease or restore the land’s availability. Contact the other party and Research Farms promptly about a payment problem; the landowner must cooperate in resolving owner-related refunds and provide records for disputes. Research Farms can process a refund or respond to a chargeback through Stripe when appropriate. Stripe can debit the platform for destination-charge refunds and disputes; to the extent permitted by law, the landowner must reimburse Research Farms for amounts and reasonable dispute costs attributable to the landowner’s breach, misrepresentation, or failure to perform. Each user remains responsible for losses caused by their own conduct. Research Farms does not guarantee a refund or a chargeback outcome.

10. Research Farms benefit

Any future Research Farms Pro benefit is promotional, subject to eligibility and availability, can change before launch, and has no cash value. It is not part of rent or a guaranteed lease benefit until Research Farms confirms activation in writing.

11. Third-party services

The Service uses third-party identity, mapping, satellite, hosting, and other providers. Their services and content remain subject to their own terms. Research Farms is not responsible for third-party outages, errors, content, or conduct.

12. Suspension and termination

Research Farms can suspend or terminate access, remove content, or preserve records when reasonably necessary to protect users, the Service, property, legal rights, or security; investigate suspected violations; comply with lawful process; or enforce these Terms. You can stop using the Service at any time. Provisions intended to survive termination remain effective.

13. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” Research Farms disclaims warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, noninfringement, accuracy, availability, safety, and results. Research Farms does not warrant any user, property, listing, boundary, crop result, lease, payment, or transaction. Nothing excludes a warranty that cannot lawfully be excluded.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Research Farms and its operators, affiliates, personnel, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, punitive, or consequential damages; lost profits, crops, data, use, goodwill, or opportunity; property damage; personal injury caused by another user; or disputes arising from listings, land, leases, or user conduct. Their total aggregate liability arising from the Service will not exceed the greater of $100 or the amount you paid Research Farms during the 12 months before the claim. These limits apply regardless of legal theory and do not limit liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

15. Release and indemnity

You release Research Farms and its operators, affiliates, personnel, and service providers from claims arising from your dealings or disputes with another user, except where prohibited by law. You will defend, indemnify, and hold them harmless from third-party claims, losses, liabilities, and reasonable costs arising from your content, property, activities, lease, breach of these Terms, negligence, willful misconduct, or violation of law or another person’s rights.

16. Dispute resolution

Before filing a claim, you must send a written notice to contact@researchfarms.com describing the dispute and requested resolution and allow 30 days for informal resolution. Except for eligible small-claims matters or requests for emergency injunctive relief, disputes will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under the rules applicable to the dispute. Arbitration will occur in Connecticut or remotely. No class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding is permitted. You can opt out of arbitration by emailing the same address within 30 days after first accepting these Terms. Connecticut law governs, without regard to conflict-of-law rules; courts serving Windham County, Connecticut have exclusive jurisdiction over claims not subject to arbitration.

17. Changes and general terms

Research Farms can update these Terms prospectively by posting a revised effective date and, for material changes, providing reasonable notice. Continued use after the effective date means acceptance. These Terms are the entire agreement about the Service and do not replace a signed property lease. You cannot assign these Terms without consent; Research Farms can assign them with the Service. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be limited as necessary and the remainder continues. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.

18. Contact

Questions and legal notices: contact@researchfarms.com.