Is the aforementioned formula for agricultural partnership permissible, where the financier covers the costs, and is repaid from the harvest with the remainder divided, and the farmers become indebted to him for the difference if the expenses are not covered?

This image is impermissible because it does not fall under the categories of permissible sharecropping (Muzara'ah). The landlord's condition to take a portion of the harvest before its division, in exchange for seeds or other items, invalidates the sharecropping agreement. Ibn Qudamah said: "As for when they agree that the landlord takes the equivalent of his seeds, it is not valid, because it is as if he stipulated for himself known measures (of produce), and that is a corrupt condition, by which the sharecropping is invalidated." If the sharecropping is invalidated, then the entire harvest belongs to the landlord, and he owes the cultivator a fair wage (ujrat al-mithl).