The leasing of land is a significant element of the environment in which farming operates throughout the world. Agricultural leasing arrangements are a ‘fact of life’. There is a large variety of such arrangements, from the small-scale labour tenancies and sharecropping agreements common in Africa, Asia and Latin America, to the highly mechanized agricultural tenancies of northern Europe and other OECD areas. While being very different in their contexts, they are all characterized by a similar form, involving a separation between the ownership and the use of land.
Leasing offers a means for farming families with little or no land and capital to gain access to land. As such, leasing arrangements are an established part of the fabric of the agricultural sector, often to the extent that their significance has been overlooked, down-played, or misunderstood. Indeed, the continued existence of such arrangements is a matter of concern in regions where they are associated with landownership concentration and imbalances of power in favour of landowners.