Rules and Side Effects--Who's a Farmer

From the Farm and Ranch Guide:

Many farm management advisors and university experts have been advising farm operators to look at negotiating “flexible cash rental leases” with their landlords as an alternative to paying very high straight-out cash rental rates on rented land. This strategy seems to make a lot of sense, given the high volatility in the current grain markets, and the high degree of uncertainty relative to future crop revenues.

The article goes on to advise that such a strategy may run afoul of the FSA rules on division of payments--very briefly, if you share in the risk, you're eligible for subsidy payments. So any shift from a straight cash lease, where the operator takes all the risk, both of whether the crop will be good and what the price will be, to give some of the risk to the landowner is likely to cause problems, at least if the FSA bureaucrat is doing her job.