How to Make an Offer on Farmland for Rent

When you’re looking for farmland for rent, you may find yourself wondering how to find the right land and the right landlord to help you meet your goals. In this process, you’ll be asked to tell your story: potential landlords will want to know how you became a farmer and what makes you qualified to work their land. They’ll wonder what your values are and whether they match their own.

If you’re a farmer who’s searching for agricultural land for lease, you know you’re not just throwing offers out into the wind—you’re marketing yourself, targeting farmland you want to work on, and hoping that your message hits home.

Tillable’s farmland rental platform gives farmers the opportunity to market themselves to landlords in a standardized format that allows compelling stories to rise to the top. If you’re not sure how to effectively communicate that you’re the right farmer for the land you’re interested in renting, read on to learn how to leverage your farmland operator profile on Tillable.

Tell the story of your operation to farmland owners on Tillable

If you’re wondering what your farmland operator profile includes, the answer is simple: you’ll be asked to provide basic personal information, details about the type of business you run, and a description of your farming operation. Ensuring that the information you entered is accurate and up-to-date is critical.

This last section is your chance to tell your story. Use this opportunity to describe…

• When your farming operation started.
• Who else is involved?
• How you came to be the decision-maker.
• What you’re looking to accomplish by adding these acres to your operation.

For example, if you lost a few tillable acres last year when one of your landlords sold their farm, you may be making an offer on farmland because you want to replace those lost acres to maintain the size of your operation. Or, you may simply be looking to expand an already successful operation, in which case the person evaluating your offer will be able to see how this new land fits into your business growth plans. Include this information: providing context for your offer will help landlords understand who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish by placing an offer on this farmland.

Your cash rent offer is one piece of the puzzle

Most (but not all) land you see for rent on Tillable is being managed by Tillable through our Hassle-Free Lease option for landowners. In these situations, Tillable is responsible for selecting the farmer to rent the land; in others, the landowner or other stakeholder is directly making that decision. Regardless of who’s making the final farmer selection, some folks may not fill out their operator profile completely because they assume that person is focused solely on the financial component of an offer. But signing a cash rent lease on Tillable isn’t just about how much money is on the table—the person considering your offer will be thinking about your fit in a broad sense, and this is why your profile is so important.

Of course, your offer is also important. It should be competitive with the market and it should make sense within the context of the story your profile tells about your operation. Because making an offer on Tillable is as easy as entering in the price per acre you wish to pay, it’s important that you take advantage of the opportunities in your profile to tell your story and lay out your goals.

Here’s what happens after you place an offer on farmland to rent

You can modify your offer right up until the offer deadline expires. If you want to update the amount, or simply add more details around what the farmland for rent would mean to your operation and why you’re the right farmer for the land, no problem—just make those changes before the deadline.

Once the deadline has passed, it’s time for your offer to be reviewed along with all the others that have been submitted on that farm. In the case of land that’s being managed by Tillable, we select three to five farmers from the offers submitted, call their references, and talk to them individually. These conversations help us evaluate each offer to get a sense of each farmer’s interest in the land, their values, and whether they’ll be a good fit. This is the same process we advocate for all farms going through price discovery on Tillable.

Once a farmer has been selected, they’ll receive the lease to sign through the Tillable platform. All other farmers who made an offer will be notified that the selection has been made and the farm is no longer available.

On Tillable, your farmer profile is confidential

While you can use Tillable to search for farmland for rent in your area, farmland operator profiles are not searchable on the platform. While some Tillable staff members have permissions to review profiles through the platform as a part of the offer review, they’re a limited group with limited access.

The only person who can see the information in your operator profile on Tillable is the person deciding whether to accept your offer to rent the farmland.

Trust is a huge part of the land rental process, and we understand that farmland is a particularly valuable asset, financially and emotionally. Farmers trust us with their personal information and landowners trust us to help rent their farms—we never take this for granted.

Find the right farmland for rent to tell the story of your future

When it’s time to review cash rent offers on Tillable, no one gets chosen by accident. In our experience, the person who makes the highest offer on farmland to rent is not typically the one that winds up signing the lease.

By providing information about your farming operation and your goals, you’re demonstrating your interest in more than renting a few more tillable acres—you’re telling a story about what you want your future to be, and that’s what farmland owners want to know.