By Don Donovan 

This article is addressed to landowners who aren’t active farmers. What is the most important point of discussion when you talk about your farm with your tenant each year? Are you tempted to change tenants when offered a few more dollars of cash rent? Do you discuss how your land will be farmed or just settle on the bottom line? 

Do you have a cash rent contract, and if so, what conditions do you require to be met? Do you review soil test results to ensure that nutrient levels are staying at acceptable levels or improving? Do you know what kind of tillage your tenant uses? Do you know how tillage can impact the productivity potential of your farm for years to come?

When you take a drive around your farm, what do you see? Do you see a field that has had fall tillage with very little crop residue left to protect the soil surface over winter? Do you see gullies that formed after heavy rains in fields that have no residue to protect them? Do you see large areas of water standing because tillage has caused soil compaction or because there’s a lack of soil structure that reduces the soil’s capability to absorb water?

Or maybe you see something totally different. I work with many landowners whose tenants make sure their fields are covered with undisturbed residue from last year’s harvest. Grassed waterways and field borders have been installed to control runoff. Many of their fields are a green carpet of fall-planted cover crops, protecting the soil, collecting unused nutrients and feeding the soil’s microbiology.

Your decision
Now that you’ve looked over your farm, do you like what you see? What do you as owner of the farm want for your land?

After all, you are the owner and it’s your land. You have the right to suggest changes, and you have the right to request changes.

You may have to compromise with your tenant. Changes may mean you agree to a lesser cash rent payment while changes are being implemented.

You may have to return part of your cash rent payment to the farm by investing in drainage and lime and maybe cover crops. These things will provide a return on your investment, improve productivity and make your farm more valuable.

If you would like to see cover crops growing on your farm through the winter, offer to help your tenant with the cost. Maybe the most important thing is that you need to be involved in how your farm is operated. That land is your bank account, and the bank account of your future generations.

Indiana has some of the most productive soils in the world. The ability to grow food, fiber and fuel is important to today’s citizens, but as the population increases and available cropland decreases, it will be exponentially more important to your children and their children in the years to come. 

My challenge is for you to determine how you and your tenant can work together to leave your soil in better health for the next generation! Help is readily available, as close as your local soil and water conservation district and Natural Resources Conservation Service office.

Donovan is the district soil conservationist with the NRCS in Parke County, Ind. He writes on behalf of the Indiana Conservation Partnership.