Mike,
We leased some of our land to the farmer that was farming it before we bought it. We purchased 20 acres and he farmed about 10. The deal was he gave us X amount of dollars as a base, then a % of the crop profits. The land is very poor tyner soil a,b,c, and d, which is very sandy loam on varying slopes. He attempted to grow corn on it, but never got all that much without irrigation. We ended up getting about $38.00 per acre. Seems like a small amount, but it more than covered the property taxes for the entire property, which are only about $100.00 per year. We ended the deal when we planted trees on the fields. He was fine with that because the property was just on the line of being more work than it was worth. It was a break even piece of ground for him. Your friends might want to check with the local county extension agent to see if they can give some guidelines for leasing crop land.
Also, they should look into any possibilities of government programs for conservation reserve, classified forest and classified wildlife habitats. If you get your land into some of those programs, the taxes are significantly reduced. One program that we will be looking into when we build will designate 1 acre around the house as residential and we will be taxed on it. The other 19 acres will be classified forest and wildlife habitat and the taxes will be almos nothing on those acres. We just have to be careful to be sure we can take the land out if our kids ever want to build on the property. We could designate more property as residential, but we will do as little as possible. Some government programs are very restrictive and you give up control of some things. Some are very lenient. For instance, we had a state biologist and forester come out and develop a plan for our propery for re-forestation. We followed those guidelines and purchased 2150 trees(half pines and half mixed hardwoods) and had them planted and side sprayed according to the plan. Then the government came out and inspected it. We passed and they re-imbursed us for 75% of the cost. Total for us was only $265.00! The only stipulations were we had to either side spray once a year or mow a few times a year to keep the weeds down, and we couldn't treat the pines as Christmas trees. After the 5 years was up, we could do whatever we wanted to them. Even cut them down, if we wanted.
Anyway, have them talk to the government agencies for guidance. The service are free because you already paid for them with your taxes. Hope this helps.
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