Renters, landlords, and farmland stewardship

Abstract

Are farmers better stewards of the land they own than the land they rent from others? We answer this question using a data set that identifies Ontario farmers' conservation practices on their own land as well as the land they rent. Using a fixed-effects regression approach, we find that the role of tenure varies for different types of conservation practices. Farmers were found to be just as likely to adopt a machinery-related practice such as conservation tillage on their rented land as that land which they own. On the other hand, farmers were found to be less likely to adopt site-specific conservation practices such as planting cover crops on rented land. However, this effect diminishes as the expected length of the rental relationship increases when the landlord has a farming background.JEL classifications: Q15, Q24

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

“…Resilience scholars note the forces that drive behaviors of land managers, but usually do not specify the conditions that grant these users power to make decisions. Some researchers have explored the role of discrete tenure categories on determining sustainability indicators, for example the effect of owned land vs. rented on conservation decisions (Deaton et al, 2018;Ontl et al, 2018), but foundational resiliency contributions tend to elide the social and political processes of land tenure on shaping social ecological systems (SESs). In the Darnhofer et al (2010) paper that first linked resilience thinking to agricultural contexts, the authors entrench the idea of farm decision making as determined by ownership status:…”

Farm management fragmentation in Nova Scotia does not affect farm habitat provision

“…Our survey of Nova Scotia landholders (n = 350) allows us to: (1) present a candidate metric for farm‐scale management fragmentation and test it against farm habitat prevalence and habitat management decisions; (2) describe the variability in farm management fragmentation, including four types; and (3) explore the implications of those types for amount and management of farm habitats including woodlands, ponds, and wetlands. We are unable to tackle aspects of how that habitat is distributed (e.g., patch sizes) or differences between owned or rented land, though tenure and its security are clearly relevant for how land is managed (Deaton et al ). We conclude this exploratory, descriptive work with recommendations for further research.…”

Why do farmers care about rented land? Investigating the context of farmland tenure

“…Later, Cole and Johnson (2002) find no tenure effect for soil loss, whereas Soule et al (2000) do find an effect for conservation practices such as minimum tillage, as does Fraser (2004) for the planting of soil conserving crops. More recently, Varble et al (2016) find that tenants are more likely to use conservation tillage than owners, but less likely to rotate crops, and Deaton et al (2018) find a tenure effect for cover crops, but this effect is contingent on lease length and the farming background of the landlord. For Europe, only a handful of studies exist.…”

“…One lesson that can be drawn from this is that a potential tenure effect is probably highly contextual, depending on the farming practice under question, the region investigated, as well as details of renting, among other factors. Details of rental arrangements are taken up in few studies, including differentiating between share renters and cash renters (Ervin 1982;Soule et al 2000), considering information on lease length (Fraser 2004;Deaton et al 2018), or focusing on absentee landlords (Petrzelka et al 2013;Petrzelka and Armstrong 2015) and how they and their relationships with tenants differ from residential landlords (Dillman and Carlson 1982;Ulrich-Schad et al 2016). In addition, other aspects such as the personal relationship between landlords and tenants have been investigated in the context of rental prices (Bryan et al 2015;Taylor and Featherstone 2018), but have also been suggested as a potentially important aspect for conservation by Carolan (2005) and Leonhardt et al (2019).…”

“…Due to the shorter planning period associated with a lease, renters are less likely than owners to reap the benefits of conservation investments, particularly those with a long pay-back period. However, we further assume-and know from previous research-that the following factors may influence the existence or intensity of this tenure effect: the length and security of renting (Deaton et al 2018), plot characteristics such as its distance to the farmhouse or farming difficulties (e.g., sloping land and soil quality) (Deaton et al 2018;Leonhardt et al 2019), the rental price (Ranjan et al 2019b), and the relationship tenants have with their landlords (including kinship or other personal ties as well as whether the landlord is residential or absentee) (Ulrich-Schad et al 2016;Bryan et al 2015;Taylor and Featherstone 2018;Leonhardt et al 2019). In addition, we posit that conservation requirements specified in the rental contract may also influence a tenure effect (Derr 1987), as may farm-level aspects such as participation in AES that need to be applied to an entire farm operation (Sklenicka et al 2015).…”