[Market-farming] displaced farmers

Allan Balliett aballiett at frontiernet.net
Fri Dec 11 11:32:48 EST 2009


Etienne = In your case, get the advice of an 
attorney, an attorney experienced in agriculture 
before you sign the lease. I don't doubt that 
with an attorney looking over the lease that you 
can have something better than the rest of us 
have had.

At the same time, though, this came out during 
the most obvious period of the US financial 
collapse: a contract is meaningless if both sides 
to not intend to uphold it. Going to court and 
winning gets you little. You may have a judgement 
against the landowner, but how do you enforce 
that judgement? Only through the landowners 
cooperation, is how. Most of us are in too big of 
a hurry to find new ground or to start the next 
season to be able to pursue these situations.

Another word of advice: in this state, too, you 
cannot be pushed off a piece of ground while you 
have a crop in the ground. You do get to harvest 
and tend that crop but it, for example, you live 
in a house on that land, you are not allowed to 
use the house during the same period. This is 
what happened to the man I was telling you about 
who left his greenhouses to the Moonies. He got 
to harvest his crop but he had to commute for 45 
minutes each way to do so!

-Allan in WV

>Allan Balliett wrote:
>>  Sorry, Robert - It has been my experience, and the experience of
>>  other farmers that I know, that land leases always boil down to 'the
>>  will of the owner.'  If he's tired of having a farmer on his land, it
>>  don't matter what the lease says.
><...snip...>
>>  If you've worked around the weakness of farm leases, I'd like to hear
>>  how because I'm again in a lease situation and the land was recently
>>  subdivided (on paper, 36 acres has become 3 parcels of land), so, bad
>>  economy aside, the writing is on the wall, no?
>
>I understand nobody here is an actual attorney, and only provide their
>own perspectige for discussion, but I find the above a very surprising
>statement.  It is my understanding is that a lease is a binding
>contract, and as such cannot be voided at will by the landowner (unless
>there is a clause saying so in the lease).  Isn't it?  Why would it boil
>down to the "will of the owner"?  Is it simply because the owner is
>usually is a better financial position to sustain the litigation process?
>
>
>That question is very interesting to me, because I am considering a
>long-term (30~50 years) lease for the piece of land I would like to
>farm, as I cannot buy it (for legal, not financial, reasons).  I am in
>an entirely different juridiction than you are, and the rule of law here
>is quite different than what it is in the US (the Province of Québec
>legal system is based on the French Civil Code, not the British Common
>Law).  In any case, I am expecting the lease I am looking forward to
>sign to be notarized, so I am reasonably certain that it will, indeed,
>be binding.
>
>That kinda remind that I should actually consult a notary ahead of the
>negociation to clear up the question.  Yep, let's do that!
>
>Cheers, and good vibes to Doreen :)
>
>Etienne
>
>
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