Cash Rent Leases

Now is the time dictated by Iowa law to begin negotiating crop land leases for 2009 or at least notify your tenant/landlord, as the case may be, if you wish to change any of the terms in your current lease. (That requires mutual consent in the case of multi-year leases.)

Rents on the whole will rise this year. Aside from high grain prices, cash rents are at a historically low level in terms of their percentage of land value. (See William Edwards' excellent analysis for ISU extension.) As interest rates rise, land values will decline and with them, so will cash rental rates but at a slower rate as the return on investment moves back toward historic levels.

In the meantime, we are dealing with the current environment. Based on recent sales, land prices in the Adair and Guthrie County areas seemed to have topped out in the $60 to $65 per CSR point range. Using a 5% ROI on $60 per CSR yields a $3 per CSR point cash rent. I have seen cash rent as high as $4.75 per CSR point, but I think $3/pt will catch most of the rents on good quality farm land in this area.

A number of landlord/tenant negotiators are switching from cash rent to a hybrid lease in which the rent is paid in whole or in part in bushels of grain. The production decisions and production risk remain with the tenant (and its crop insurer) but the landlord assumes some of the market risk and relieves the tenant of some cash flow requirement, which is attractive to the tenant in this period of rapidly escalating input prices.

Good luck with your negotiations!