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  • From: Allan Balliett <aballiett AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] displaced farmers
  • Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:32:48 -0500

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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