IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/usdami/310203.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Absent Landlords in Agriculture -- A Statistical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Siraj G. Bawa
  • Scott Callahan

Abstract

The majority of rented farmland is owned by landlords who do not operate farms, and a subset of these landlords, known as absent landlords, do not reside in the local farming area. This raises important questions about their effects on the economic health of the U.S. farm sector. Absent landlords have the potential to alter observed outcomes in agricultural real estate markets, rural employment markets, and engagement in conservation practices, given that the incentives they face may differ from operating or local nonoperator landlords. This study looks at the association between landlord absenteeism and multiple measures of long-term economic and agricultural health for the 25 most important agricultural States by cash receipts. We find that a greater prevalence of absent landlords is associated with lower rental rates and land values at the State level, and there is no association with recent changes in rents or land values. Also, while we find mixed results with respect to investments in soil quality, we do find evidence that the prevalence of absent landlords is associated with declining local employment rates. This study is designed to foster a broad discussion and form a starting point for subsequent statistical analyses to uncover the causal effects that absent landlords have on long-term economic health of agricultural production.

Suggested Citation

  • Siraj G. Bawa & Scott Callahan, 2021. "Absent Landlords in Agriculture -- A Statistical Analysis," USDA Miscellaneous 310203, United States Department of Agriculture.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:usdami:310203
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.310203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/310203/files/err-281.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.310203?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kuethe, Todd H. & Bigelow, Daniel P., 2018. "Bargaining Power in Farmland Rental Markets," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274113, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Meredith J. Soule & Abebayehu Tegene & Keith D. Wiebe, 2000. "Land Tenure and the Adoption of Conservation Practices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(4), pages 993-1005.
    3. Wendong Zhang & Alejandro Plastina & Wendiam Sawadgo, 2018. "Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey 1982–2017: A Thirty-five Year Perspective," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 18-wp580, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    4. Wade, Tara & Claassen, Roger & Wallander, Steven, 2015. "Conservation-Practice Adoption Rates Vary Widely by Crop and Region," Economic Information Bulletin 262111, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    5. Heimlich, Ralph E., 2000. "Farm Resource Regions," Agricultural Information Bulletins 33625, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    6. Duffy, Michael & Smith, Darnell, 2008. "Farmland Ownership and Tenure in Iowa, 2007," Staff General Research Papers Archive 13013, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Winikoff, Justin B. & Maguire, Karen, 2024. "The Role of Commercial Energy Payments in Agricultural Producer Income," Economic Information Bulletin 342468, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Winters-Michaud, Clayton P. & Haro, Alfredo & Callahan, Scott & Bigelow, Daniel P., 2024. "Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2017," Economic Information Bulletin 345316, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bawa, Siraj G & Callahan, Scott, 2021. "Absent Landlords in Agriculture – A Statistical Analysis," Economic Research Report 327199, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Boyer, Christopher M. & Lambert, Dayton M. & Larson, James A. & Tyler, Donald, 2017. "Investment Analysis of Long-term Cover Crops and Tillage Systems on Cotton Production," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258525, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Wallander, Steven & Bowman, Maria & Beeson, Peter & Claassen, Roger, 2017. "Farmers and Habits: The Challenge of Identifying the Sources of Persistence in Tillage Decisions," 2018 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 5-7, 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 266307, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Sawadgo, Wendiam & Zhang, Wendong & Plastina, Alejandro, 2019. "What drives landowners’ conservation decisions? Evidence from Iowa," ISU General Staff Papers 201905230700001082, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    5. Peggy Petrzelka & Sandra Marquart-Pyatt, 2011. "Land tenure in the U.S.: power, gender, and consequences for conservation decision making," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(4), pages 549-560, December.
    6. Katrin Daedlow & Nahleen Lemke & Katharina Helming, 2018. "Arable Land Tenancy and Soil Quality in Germany: Contesting Theory with Empirics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-15, August.
    7. David J. Pannell & Roger Claassen, 2020. "The Roles of Adoption and Behavior Change in Agricultural Policy," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(1), pages 31-41, March.
    8. Lee, Seungyub & McCann, Laura, 2018. "Adoption of Cover Crops in Soybean Production," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266576, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    9. Leonhardt, Heidi & Braito, Michael & Penker, Marianne, 2019. "Why do farmers care about rented land?," FORLand Working Papers 14 (2019), Humboldt University Berlin, DFG Research Unit 2569 FORLand "Agricultural Land Markets – Efficiency and Regulation".
    10. Chai, Yuan & J. Pannell, David & G. Pardey, Philip, 2023. "Nudging farmers to reduce water pollution from nitrogen fertilizer," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    11. Bahrami, Shahin & Rouhi Rad, Mani & Nayga, Rodolfo M., 2024. "Land Tenure and Conservation in Agriculture: Evidence from Nationwide Farm-level Data," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343986, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. repec:ags:aaea22:335830 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Ritter, Matthias & Hüttel, Silke & Odening, Martin & Seifert, Stefan, 2020. "Revisiting the relationship between land price and parcel size in agriculture," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    14. Diego Ferraro & Daniela Blanco & Sebasti'an Pessah & Rodrigo Castro, 2021. "Land use change in agricultural systems: an integrated ecological-social simulation model of farmer decisions and cropping system performance based on a cellular automata approach," Papers 2109.01031, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    15. Banerjee, Swagata (Ban) & Martin, Steven W. & Roberts, Roland K. & Larson, James A. & Hogan, Robert J., Jr. & Johnson, Jason L. & Paxton, Kenneth W. & Reeves, Jeanne M., 2007. "Adoption of Conservation-Tillage Practices in Cotton Production," 2007 Annual Meeting, February 4-7, 2007, Mobile, Alabama 34842, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    16. John M. Wallace & Alwyn Williams & Jeffrey A. Liebert & Victoria J. Ackroyd & Rachel A. Vann & William S. Curran & Clair L. Keene & Mark J. VanGessel & Matthew R. Ryan & Steven B. Mirsky, 2017. "Cover Crop-Based, Organic Rotational No-Till Corn and Soybean Production Systems in the Mid-Atlantic United States," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-21, April.
    17. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing & Berhanu, Adenw & Samuel, Gebre-Selassie, 2005. "Mechanisms for Land Transfer in Ethiopia: implications for Efficiency, Equity and Non-Farm Development," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-98, May.
    18. Nathan D. DeLay & Nathanael M. Thompson & James R. Mintert, 2022. "Precision agriculture technology adoption and technical efficiency," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 195-219, February.
    19. Kim, Seon-Ae & Westra, John V. & Gillespie, Jeffrey M., 2006. "Factors Influencing the Adoption of Russian Varroa-Resistant Honey Bees," 2006 Annual Meeting, February 5-8, 2006, Orlando, Florida 35311, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    20. García-Amado, Luis Rico & Pérez, Manuel Ruiz & Escutia, Felipe Reyes & García, Sara Barrasa & Mejía, Elsa Contreras, 2011. "Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services: Equity and additionality in a case study from a Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2361-2368.
    21. Nadella, Karthik & Deaton, Brady & Lawley, Chad & Weersink, Alfons, 2014. "Do farmers treat rented land differently than the land they own? A fixed effects model of farmer’s decision to adopt conservation practices on owned and rented land," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170633, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agribusiness; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management; Land Economics/Use;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:usdami:310203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.usda.gov .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.