Business : Iowa's Farmland Owners Are More Local Than Many Think

Farm and Rural Life Poll shows statistics and perspectives on rented farmland

It's no secret that much of Iowa's farmland is rented, and non-operator farmland owners are often considered to be out-of-touch if they do not live on the land they rent. But data from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach shows that most landowners live fairly close to their land, and many have kin or friendship ties to their tenants.

Contrary to popular beliefs, which tend to paint landlords as "absentee" who live in faraway places like Chicago or Arizona, a strong majority of landlords live on or very close to their land or within the same county, and many have a farm background.

According to the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, 44% of farmers surveyed said their primary landlord is a relative, and 28% considered them to be a friend of the family. Just 20% indicated that their landlords were neither a relative nor a friend of the family, and 4% were a company or financial institution.

Iowa's non-operator landowners also tend to live nearby. Thirty-six percent of farmers reported that their primary landlords live on or very close to their land, and an additional 24% lived in the county where the land was located. Just 16% of landlords lived out of state.

"Landlords are not necessarily as distant and disengaged as people sometimes assume," said J. Arbuckle, a rural sociologist with ISU Extension and Outreach and lead author of the survey. "They have social ties to their land and their tenants; a pretty substantial majority of tenants categorize their landlord as either a relative or a friend of the family."

The landowner-tenant relationship is important for many reasons, according to Arbuckle, especially when it comes to caring for the land and implementing conservation practices.

More than half of farmers surveyed said they communicated with their landlord about conservation at least once during the past year, with 25% saying they communicated at least 3-5 times last year. However, 44% said they did not communicate at all about conservation - indicating an area for improvement.

Farmers and landowners also have different views as to who is responsible for conservation, although 71% of farmers said they share at least some of the responsibility.

Arbuckle noted that 50% of farmers agreed that they were less likely to invest in structural or edge-of-field conservation practices (e.g., buffers, grassed waterways) on rented land, and 52% did not think their landlords had adequate conservation measures in place on their land. These findings point to a need for more conservation efforts focused on rented land.

Arbuckle said the survey provides information that can help extension and conservation professionals to foster conversations between tenants and landlords.

"The data shows that there's a lot of work to be done to help both landowners and farmers understand the benefits that conservation can have on soil health, productivity and resilience," he said. "If we want to see more conservation on rented land, we need to develop more effective cooperation and teamwork between farmers and their landlords."

The survey reflects the opinions of 972 farmers who responded, and is an annual survey conducted by ISU Extension and Outreach since 1983.