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day-to-day operations of the farm to support the and let him handle most of the management
adoption of cover crops on the operation and decisions.
even more difficult when those landowners live As for landowners who want to implement cover
long distances away. crops on their land, they often must make the

“There is — I wouldn’t say an uphill task — initial steps with their renters, said Tesdell, who
but a little bit of a substantive argument that a worked with the farmer renting his Iowa farm-
farmer has to make with these absentee land- land to adopt the practice.
owners,” Adusumilli told Agri-Pulse. “So that’s “Tenants are going to be a little reluctant to try
one of [the barriers], which is, is the farmer new practices on rented ground,” he said. “So
an actively-engaged owner or an absentee the point I like to make with landowners is, step
landowner?” up and take the lead. Get yourself educated
For instance, according to a study by USDA’s about conservation.”
Economic Research Service, states with a higher Plus, there’s the question of who pays the cost
percentage of absentee landlords had a lower of cover crops. Most landowners lease out their
percentage of cropland under cover crops in acreage either through a crop share arrange-
2017. However, the report’s authors noted there ment, in which case the owner shares in the
was no statistical association between the per- production costs and profit or loss, or through a
centage change in cover crop usage over the fixed annual rent.
period studied.
Farmers who pay cash rent don’t have to share
“I think nowadays it’s just not so much of that their profits with landowners, but those farmers
landlord interaction
with the growers any-
more because a lot of
them are either rent-
ing through a farm
management group
or they’re living away
from the farm,”
said Adam Smith,
a farmer who rents
land in Iowa and also
works at Beck’s Seed
Co. “So they’re not
really seeing what’s
going on.”
Smith said he hasn’t
had much of a prob-
lem with implement-
ing cover crops on his
rented ground, how-
ever. He said that the
owners take a fairly
hands-off approach

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