Following is a set of references to current work led by UNIDROIT and the FAO, to harmonize the legal character of commodity warehouse receipts across jurisdictions, through an UNCITRAL Model Law on Warehouse Receipts. The ERA-dr would share some similarities with conventional commodity warehouse receipts. However when an ERA-dr is sold, this means it is traded or redeemed in the form of currency: It is not the land which is sold. Independently, the land can be bought and sold as before, the ERA-dr commitment would come with some sort of covenant that runs with the land.

UNIDROIT: A proposal for UNCITRAL to develop a Model Law on Warehouse Receipts https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3040742

UNIDROIT: Working Group on a Model Law on Warehouse Receipt: Issues Paper https://www.unidroit.org/english/documents/2021/study83/wg03/s-83-wg03-02-e.pdf

UNIDROIT: Model Law on Warehouse Receipts https://www.unidroit.org/work-in-progress/model-law-on-warehouse-receipts/#1456405893720-a55ec26a-b30a

UNCITRAL: Work Program on Warehouse Receipts https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/V21/029/74/PDF/V2102974.pdf?OpenElement

FAO: Designing Warehouse Receipt Legislation https://www.fao.org/3/i4318e/i4318e.pdf

Journals of India: Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts https://journalsofindia.com/e-negotiable-warehouse-receipt-e-nwr/?print=pdf

History

Le Warrant agricole (1880-1914), Patrice Baubeau, University Paris Nanterre https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrice-Baubeau/publication/280812265_Le_Warrant_agricole_1880-1914/links/5fdb614492851c13fe9268dc/Le-Warrant-agricole-1880-1914.pdf?origin=publication_detail

It appears as a complementary instrument to the futures markets, which were liberalized at about the same time, by the law of March 28, 1885. However, since agriculture remained in some way outside the commercial sphere, the question of speculation concerned not so much the farmer as the profiteers of whom he was a victim: the agricultural warrant was thus perceived as a response to the "illegitimate" speculation of these speculators, intermediaries and traders, denounced by politicians of both the left and the right. And to do this, it gives - or is supposed to give - the farmer better control over time, i.e. over the dates and periods of harvesting and marketing.

This is indeed the main role of the warrant, whether commercial, agricultural or otherwise: to postpone the need to sell a good to a later period, supposedly more favorable than the present one. In this sense, the agricultural warrant, like the commercial warrant, is a pledge on the future, an instrument that offers a modest farmer the possibility of arbitration between maturities that is one of the attributes - and one of the sources of power - of high finance. It is obviously through this that we return to the question of property: only the latter, both because it offers a high degree of certainty and because it represents a flow of future rights - leases, rents, harvests, etc. - presents the greatest security for the creator of the property.

The FAO report cites above states that the US Federal Farm Loan Act (1916) led to the current form of depositary receipts https://www.fca.gov/template-fca/about/federal-farm-loan-act-1916.pdf That may be the case, however the ERA-dr design is opposite to that 1916 design based on "farm loans". If the ERA-dr arrangement is deemed by any court to be a loan, then it is the creator of topsoil quantity and quality who is lending its productive capacity to society . The deposit receipt given by the currency issuer to the farm is the currency issuer's promise to compensate with currency the farmer's lending of (creating) that increment to the general macroeconomic security of society. Such a framework does not require the 'lending' idea however, and the concept is simpler conceptual and practically when read with the term 'creating'.