A Rural Lawyer is Hard to Find
From the Washington Post by Danielle Paquette Fourteen years ago, the veteran lawyer built his retirement home. He decorated the basement with snowmen and skis, a nod to how he’d like to spend the future. But John Thomas, 61, can’t retire. Can’t plan lengthy trips to Colorado resorts with his wife, Nancy. Not until he […]
New Tool for Negotiating Farm Rent
Cash rent negotiations will be very challenging this year. At current commodity prices it is going to be important for producers to know their costs and look at options to limit downside risk. The Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota has just released a tool to help producers and landlords evaluate alternative rental […]
Land More Valuable in Mass, Big Buyers Setting the Stage
From the Western Daily Press by Simon Copp Rising demand for land is being matched by changing practices as farmers and investors snap up larger parcels of land than previously. Where 300 acres would before have been sold as separate lots, they are now often sold as one, with farmers not limiting themselves to buying […]
Keep the Conversation Going!
From Rachel Armstrong at Farm Commons: Hello Farmers and Farm Advocates, Has a detailed farmland lease ever made your life easier? Did writing an operating agreement help you sort out your relationship with kin or partners? Has negotiating a sales contract helped you make more sales over the long term? Did a great land contract/contract […]
What is a Food Lawyer?
From National Geographic by Mary Beth Albright Once upon a time, people went to law school because they had many interests and law was a true liberal arts profession that allowed the expression of those many interests. The law touches everything so lawyering was an opportunity to be involved in a variety of subjects, to […]
Benny Bunting on Family Farmers
from the RAFI USA website Benny Bunting has served as RAFI-USA’s Lead Farm Advocate for over 20 years. In the course of his remarkably successful career as an advocate, Benny has assisted hundreds of family farmers. In 2008, Benny was awarded the prestigious Nancy Susan Reynolds Award for Personal Service. The organization produced a short […]
Czech Farmland Prices up 94% in Less than a Decade
From Bloomberg Businessweek by By Krystof Chamonikolas and Lenka Ponikelska Martin Burda gave up managing $8.1 billion of securities for something with better returns: dirt. In July he helped start Cesky Fond Pudy, the first investment company focused only on Czech farmland. Agricultural property in the Czech Republic, says Burda, “is among the least expensive in […]
The Great Migration
PBS Documentary sheds light on a problem that lingers in the land legacy of the U.S. “We were a land based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans and then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this […]
Important Land Event Wednesday in CA
Land access is a serious challenge facing small-scale farmers. Concentration of ownership, increasing farm size, rural gentrification, financial speculation, and rising pressure from residential and industrial real estate developers have made farmland increasingly difficult to get. One strategy for increasing land access that we are seeing with increasing frequency is the development of land trusts […]
Taking on the Big Land Grab
From the Land Stewardship Project by Sarah Claassen: This fall, 19 Land Stewardship Project members traveled to county courthouses across Minnesota and dug through real estate transaction records to help compile data on the state of land consolidation in rural areas. These researchers represent an important first step in a major new LSP campaign to […]