Farming in North America - The Nature of the Farm - page 22

Table 2.4
Some features of modern North American farmland contracts

Region United States Canada British Columbia Louisiana Nebraska South Dakota

General information
(1996, 1997)
% acres leased 41 37 19 54 43 38

ave. lease size (acres) 494 553 282 397 680 906

$848 a $2,274 b ave. land value/acre $933 $1206 $645 $348

Cash leases (1999)
% all leases 57 NA 71 47 42 57

% leased acreage 59 NA 72 45 52 55

Share leases (1999)
% all leases 21 NA 29 35 42 29

% leased acreage 24 NA 28 43 30 27

Sources: (1) General information from 1997 Census of Agriculture and Statistics Canada 1996 . (2) For specific
leases U.S information is from USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. 1997 Census of Agriculture and
the 1999 Agricultural Economics and Landownership Survey (Table 99). (3) The specific provincial lease data
come from the 1992 (British Columbia) surveys described in the data appendix. (4) Leased acreage for Canada is
per farm, not per plot leased.
Note: NA = not available.
a Calculated from 1,103 Canadian dollars.
b Calculated from 2,956 Canadian dollars.

either indirectly through the use of third parties (such as grain elevator reports) or directly,
is not uncommon.
Economists have also argued that cropshare contracts necessarily divide the output
between the farmer and the landowner equally. 19 The truth, however, is that cropshare
contracts vary widely, and in most states in North America are more likely not to be 50-
50 agreements. For modern agriculture, the farmer usually receives more than half of the
harvested crop. On the Great Plains, only 4 percent of the cropshare contracts gave the
farmer less than half the crop, while 66 percent gave the farmer more than half. Fifty-fifty
sharing is much more common in the Corn Belt states of Iowa and Illinois (Sotomayer,
Ellinger, and Barry, 2000; Young and Burke 2001), and in these cases it is also routine for
farmers and landowners to also share input costs, again usually 50-50. 20
Contracting in agriculture is not, of course, limited exclusively to agreements between
farmers and landowners. There are contracts for equipment, labor, marketing, production,
and services. These contracts use various methods of payment (for example, hours for trac-
tors, revenue share for marketing) and impose various duties on both farmers and other
contracting parties. These duties include sharing input costs, using specified techniques,
and performing tasks at specified times. The contracts can be simple and short-term, or they
can be complicated and long-term. Production contracts refer to arrangements in which the