34 March 26, 2015 2015 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine Lincoln Daily News.com
RENT:
CASH
The Great Equalizer
Did you know?
Logan County consists of 363,272 total farmland
acres. Of those, 183,961 acres are managed through
a landlord/tenant agreement. The majority of those
agreements are cash rent agreements.
Logan County at 50.6 percent has the highest
percentage of rented farmland in the United States.
How did that happen? One word….Scully.
While Logan County owes a great deal to the Scully
family in that they converted thousands of acres
of swampland into productive agricultural soil, the
Scully’s also became land barons. As such, even
today the potential for young farmers to become land
owners is slimmer here than anywhere in the United
States; rented ground is going to be for many, the
primary, means of being able to farm for a living.
But, the big question is can young farmers earn a
living in Logan County?
Doing the math
In the LDN fall farm magazine article,
“Will corn producers make money this year?” http://
archives.lincolndailynews.com/reference/farm_
outlook/2014%20Fall/index.html#18/z
University of Illinois figures projected the
profitability of the fall corn crop -- the price per
bushel, a state-wide estimation of yields and it utilized
a state average for land costs. Since the February
release of the National Ag Statistics Office showing
that the 2014 corn and soybean yields came in higher
than the state projection, but grain prices fell, that
potential profit picture has dimmed.
Some local farmers are reporting farm-wide losses of
least $15 an acre in 2014. In addition, there are farms
locally that had the potential of losing nearly $100/
acre.
Is there a solution?
What can be done to help keep the Logan County
farmer stay afloat? The first obvious wish would be
for high yields AND high prices. That is the great
American farmer pipe dream, and most everyone will
tell you that is never going to happen.
The next step then may be to look at the variables that
can be controlled. Is cash rent one of those variables?
To start, recall that $308 is an average per acre rent
with some rents lower, some higher. Speaking with
one landlady recently, she rents her 100 acres of
tillable farmland for $400.00 an acre. That is an
annual income of $40,000. But that is her principal
income. From that she is responsible for the property
tax, some property maintenance such as ditches,
culverts and roads, and she has to pay income tax on
the gross. Can she afford to take less in cash rent?
Possibly not.
Continued to page 36
