Off topic why don't farmers strike in 2017

Iowa State extension is giving a county by county series of programs for landlords on land renting this year. I went to one of those several years ago and one of the points made was that when the tenant looses money, he is less likely to pay the cash rent or return next year. And its easy to push the cash rent up to guarantee tenant doesn't make money on the crop. How does a tenant survive as a business not making money?

Tomorrow in Iowa is the last day to terminate a farm lease, otherwise it automatically renews on September 1.

I farmed for nearly 20 years and I understand the wild variations in market value and crop size so I rent my farm on a 50/50 crop share. I pay half the seed, fertilizer, and herbicide. My tenant pays the other half (and is good at shopping hard for the best prices), supplies the machinery, does the work, and delivers the crop to the nearest elevator that splits the crop to our two accounts. I do the merchandising of my share of the crop, sometimes paying storage on part of it.

In the best years I'm getting more income from the farm than I'd dare ask for cash rent, in the worst years I'm still getting enough to cover all my farm expenses, insurance, land taxes, and utilities. It has been most profitable for me to sell crop ahead in the spring, with a corn basis -42 to -44 cents at the local elevator the high price this year was $4.00 and I missed that high, my best sell was $3.93 and I have sold 157 bushels to the acre at an average price of $3.745. Last year the yield was 207.3 Bu / acre. That is for half the acres that is my crop share.

Gerald J.

our big green renters are seed dealers, and they charge us full price for the seed.

Reason for landowners picking tenants varies. Lost my most expensive piece of dirt because basically I'm too honest. I was already 20% over the going rate. BTO fed the landowner a line of bs to get it. In the end it was a pissing match I got a smaller chunk of dirt he got kicked off of for pulling up the the fields and emptying the clip on his fulling auto riffle on the deer in the field.