Helping Landowners Help New Farmers : Incentive Programs and Other Legal Tools for Transitioning Land to the Next Generation of Farmers

This Article examines both public efforts to assist individuals owning or controlling America's farmland and the legal tools available to help ensure an adequate financial return on a landowner's investment, while meeting the less tangible, but no less important, desire of many landowners to see an economically and socially renewed rural community and to provide others with the opportunities and benefits inherent in farm living. Thus, this Article begins with a brief overview of the relatively limited research available in relation to landowner concerns about beginning farmer issues and the outlook for beginning farmer assistance from landowners as America's farmland changes hands. This will include an examination of current landowner assistance programs, which, depending on the structure of the program, will also allow exploration of crucial considerations for landowners in providing land access for beginning farmers. For instance, both Iowa and Nebraska's Beginning Farmer Tax Credit programs provide greater credits for landowners that enter a crop-share arrangement an element of the program that improves a new farmer's likelihood for success and emphasizes the importance of risk-sharing in a landlord-tenant relationship. Finally, the Article will examine the important elements of legal transactions that are not addressed by current public policy but, nonetheless, have the potential to benefit new farmers