By and large, Canada’s farmers have adapted to all the changes in farmland renting over the past several decades. This is very good news because a lot more change is coming.
Not everything is perfect in today’s rental markets. There is never enough land, for one thing. And there’s never a perfect way — or, at least, there’s never been a way that everyone agrees is a perfect way for setting out the terms of a rental agreement. Nor is there a good discovery system that publishes what the current rent bids are running at.
There are concerns as well about the impact of renting on soil quality and farm sustainability, although these are being addressed.
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First, though, let’s look at market efficiency. This is something we can crudely assess in a couple of different ways. How well does current practice put a willing landlord together with a willing renter to ensure the land is productively farmed?
And how flexible is the category? Can farmers at different career and life stages adapt the way they access rented, leased or “non-owned” land to reflect their specific needs and address the values that they need to see incorporated into such a plan?
As I said in my first paragraph, on most such measures, generally, today’s rental system scores an “adequate.”
Our February 27 issue of Country Guide, though, goes some way to suggest that the market is changing. In short, it is becoming more profitable to more sophisticated players, no matter which side of the handshake they’re on. (“Handshake,” by the way, is a word I use deliberately, not because I prefer unwritten agreements, which I don’t, but because, as you’ll see throughout this issue, eye-to-eye contact remains vital even in this digital age.)
A single magazine can’t be exhaustive on such a huge topic, but I do think it can show there’s a growing role for smart thinking in farmland renting.
Start at the beginning with Andrew Leach’s column on the rapidly growing interest in family farmland rental contracts in succession and estate planning, and his insider insights into how essential it is to get this right.
Writers Trevor Bacque and Jodi Helmer explore some of the approaches available to today’s farmers to use investors’ money to achieve farm goals. To me, at least, this seems an area that is bound to grow, in part because land prices are so high compared to short-term productive capability but also because the sector seems to me at least to be ripe for a lot more innovation.
Leeann Minogue writes with an eye to the future as she talks to Jeff Barlow, who rents from 43 mostly non-farming landlords near Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe, and Mark and Bobbie Bratrud in Sasktachewan, at the forefront of a wave of very young retirees with ground that is going to come up for rent.
There’s much more too, and in coming months you will find more rental insights on our website and in our social media, so keep tuned.
Are we getting it right on rent? Are these trendlines healthy for a farm population that is growing its professionalism by leaps and bounds? Let me know at [email protected].
