ABSTRACT
However, in 1995 the Agricultural Tenancies Act created farm business tenancies (FBTs) as a new type of landlord-tenant agreement. FBTs were designed with three interrelated objectives in mind (Whitehead et al. 1997): first, to encourage more land to be made available for farming under tenancy agreements; second, to provide opportunities for new entrants to the farming sector; and third, to promote efficiency in agricultural land use. Overall, FBTs were designed to provide more flexibility in landlord-tenant agreements and to allow greater opportunities for farmers to engage in diversification activities and to expand and/or restructure their businesses. Nevertheless, most FBT agreements have covered relatively small areas of land, for relatively short periods of time, and Whitehead et al. (2002) indicated that around two-thirds of FBT landlords were private individuals, the rest tending to be ‘traditional’ institutions such as the Church of England, the National Trust and local authorities. While they increase flexibility in the tenancy sector, there is little evidence that FBTs have encouraged tenant farmers to engage in diversification activities. Of those farmers farming exclusively under an FBT, only 13 per cent had become involved in diversification activities (ibid.).
