THE RENT AND VALUE OF FARM LAND 627 



tion of the two is, however, extremely difficult in the qase of farming 

 operations, though often quite obvious in connection with city prop- 

 erty. The factory or store site renders no service save that of stand- 

 ing room; the building plays a technological part in the industrial 

 process quite similar to that of any other part of the mechanical equip- 

 ment. The land is frequently held by one owner and the building 

 by another. Under these conditions it is easy to distinguish that 

 part of the whole payment which is to be credited to land as ground 

 rent and the part which is to be figured as interest upon the cost of 

 the equipment (building, elevators, boilers, shafting, etc.) placed upon 

 it. In the case of the farmer who rents bare land to till or pasture, 

 such payment as he makes is, evidently, pure economic rent. If, on 

 the other hand, this land has been capitalized with fences, wells, 

 houses, barns, irrigation ditches, and the like, it is obvious that part 

 of what he pays must go for the upkeep and depreciation of these 

 capital-goods and to pay the owner for the use of the capital which 

 he has tied up in these forms. If it be part of the renting contract 

 that the landlord shall furnish teams, implements, seed, and perhaps 

 even the family living, the element of interest in the so-called rent 

 payment stands out clearly. At the other extreme, fertilizer, tile 

 drains, and irrigation works become so thoroughly incorporated into 

 the land and its productivity so inextricably bound up with their 

 presence and operation that separation seems out of the question. 

 As a result, we are practically forced to resort to the division used 

 in law, and class together land and those things which are attached 

 to it as fixtures, distinguishing this composite factor from capital- 

 goods, which are movable. 1 



198. METHODS OF RENTING LAND IN IOWA 2 

 BY O. G. LLOYD 



In general, there are two systems of renting in use hi Iowa, cash 

 and share. An important difference between them is that a larger 

 proportion of capital is furnished and a larger risk is assumed by 

 the cash tenant as compared with the share tenant. 



1 Certain modern economists attack this problem in a somewhat different way, 

 by viewing the lump sum as a composite rent payment, consisting of the rent of 

 land and the rents of the various capital-goods which are leased with it under the 

 renting contract. This raises difficult issues as to the actual basis of income and 

 capitalization which it seems wisest not to bring into a book of this character. 

 EDITOR. 



2 Adapted from Bulletin 159, Iowa Experiment Station, pp. 174-78. 



