5 Tips to Make Your Property an Income Producer
Whether you’re looking to put in new food plots or build a new road or levee around a field, we are all looking for ways to offset the costs associated with managing and improving our hunting property. With the right knowledge and foresight, we can often find ways for our properties to pay for the improvements we are looking to make without reaching into our own pockets.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is meant to help get you thinking about the options that may work best for you and your management goals.
1. Rent Acreage to Local Farmer – This option may seem obvious to those of you who have land in higher agriculture areas like the Delta, but there are many small fields in the hills (and small pockets in the Delta) that are not currently utilized for farming. To be eligible for farmland in the eyes of the FSA/NRCS offices, this land will have to meet their criteria (not highly erodible and not a wetland). One way around meeting that requirement though, is if the field has been farmed one or more years since 1985. Check with your local FSA/NRCS office to find out if farming your land is an option.
2. Timber Harvest -Cutting timber is a blasphemous term in many minds, but it doesn’t always have to be. If income from a timber harvest will allow you to accomplish your management goals, it certainly warrants a discussion. If your property is lacking in bedding area for deer, or nesting habitat for turkey or quail, a well-planned timber harvest can accomplish these goals for free. It doesn’t hurt that you will also have some disposable income to put into other projects as well. Focus your harvest on creating edge habitat or small (2-20 acre) pockets within larger unbroken forest habitat.
3. Pasture/Hay – Old pasture land is common on recreational properties in the Mid-South. Fenced pasture can rent for $20-$30 per acre if it is improved. If you have large areas that require bush hogging every year, you can look into allowing a local cattleman to mow the grass for hay. It may not make you money, but it can drastically reduce the amount of time and money you spend to maintain open areas every year. Beware of planting introduced pasture grass such as fescue and bermuda. They are great for managing a cattle herd, but can drastically reduce the effectiveness of your land for wildlife use. These grasses also prove difficult to eradicate once established.
4. Conservation Easements – If your property has marginal farmland and you are looking to increase wildlife use, conservation easements can allow you to accomplish those goals while getting paid to take that farmland out of production. There are private conservation easements available, but the vast majority are government-sponsored programs in the form of CRP and WRP (now WRE). CRP is available in different programs intended to achieve different goals, such as re-establishing native grassland, bottomland hardwood forest, and upland pine forest. CRP pays the landowner yearly payments which are structured to mirror farm rental payments. The Wetland Reserve Program, or WRP, is intended to restore wetlands to a working condition similar to their function before they were converted to cropland. WRP pays the landowner a one-time payment as much as $2,900 dollars per acre in our area. Most WRP easements are perpetual and run with the land regardless of whether it is sold to another party. The program will also pay as much as 100% of the cost to implement dirt work to restore wetland hydrology and to plant various bottomland hardwood saplings.
5. Hunting Lease–You may ask, “why would I lease hunting rights to my property when that’s the reason I bought it in the first place?” Most landowners who bought property to hunt would likely want to keep the rights for all seasons available to them. But oftentimes a landowner bought a property for ducks or turkey and has little to no interest in the deer that also live on the property. Leasing the deer rights to one or more individuals could help pay for the corn or millet planted in your duck holes every year. Some landowners who do not hunt their own property own it strictly to serve as a diversified investment. If you are not renting your land out to hunters, you are missing an often–large amount of potential return from your land.
These five options can help you get the most out of your property. If you’re looking for ways to tap into the income potential from your land, or are simply looking at options to help pay for a land investment in the future, please give us a call. We are always excited to help landowners and potential landowners to find and enhance their own piece of real estate.
