Latimer, Iowa (north central) | We have share rented for decades as well and they have worked well for both parties. Ours are primarily 60% tenant/40% landlord on corn, 50%/50% on soybeans, 45% tenant/55% landlord on oats.
The landlord pays the taxes, insures their share of the crop if desired, and any trucking over 25 miles. The 25 miles was chosen as that gets the crop to the end-users; ethanol plants and several bean plants. Tennant pays all labor, seed, chemicals, drying, equipment, soil-testing, lime, fertilizer, cover crops, storage. Tiling and dirt work are split 50/50. We have tiled over 900 acres on these agreements. These are nice high yielding farms. All crops are weighed on my certified scale entering and leaving the bin site. I have complete control over what kind of corn, tillage practices, crop treatments, fertility this way without having to discuss every detail. Landlords can sell crop whenever they want but do have to pay storage if hold over 1 year. I share soil tests that are done every 4 years and production/application records. Really like how the crop share adjusts for changing grain prices and the landlords can market whenever they want. Landlords do have some bins I could use but messing with old 10,000 +/- bu bins and trying to weigh, dry, and maintain crop in them is not worth the effort.
Input expenses can vary so much between operations that it would be very difficult to force a land owner into just paying or not paying for a certain brand of seed or chemical because a buddy sells it, or farmer gets a "free" truck, or they want to haul manure, or they don't want to haul manure, cover crop, no-till, etc...
To the O.P. With the deal it sounds like you have going, if its halfway decent ground, truck it and be happy about it. The 6 cents a bushel on the landlords share (say 100 bushels) that it costs you to go the additional miles vs delivering locally is 6 bucks an acre. It is already loaded on a truck, not worth risking loosing a farm for 6 bucks. Landlords are generally not the best place to start looking at being cheap or cutting costs with. Can't farm with out land. |
Trucking landlords crop on shares
