1 A Framework of Statutory Rights
6.01 The Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 provides a statutory framework for the rights and obligations of the parties. Within a tenancy of an agricultural holding, the parties’ obligations will be drawn from several sources – the written tenancy agreement itself (if there is one), ‘model clauses’ as to the repair and maintenance of fixed equipment implied by the 1986 Act itself, and statutory standards of good husbandry and sound estate management.
The legal framework contained in the 1986 Act largely reflects the priorities of the immediate post war period, when increasing productivity and efficiency were an overriding policy objective. Consequently, the rights and obligations of tenant farmers were conditioned by a need to promote efficient agricultural production. The tenant is able, for example, to require the landlord to provide fixed equipment to improve the efficiency of the enterprise, and has rights to freedom of cropping and disposal of produce. Similarly, the landlord has remedies to enforce the Rules of Good Husbandry, a code of management which requires the farmer to adopt the most advantageous production methods for the farm, having regard to its character and situation and the fixed equipment provided by the landlord.6.02 These priorities are now somewhat dated, given the impact of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and the presence of structural surpluses in most sectors of agriculture. Similarly, the reorientation of agriculture towards environmentally beneficial and sustainable farming methods, following the Mid Term Review of the CAP in 2003, and now the ‘greening’ of CAP support payments under the Europe 2020 reform process,1 means that modern farming is often out of step with the priorities of the 1986 Act – which leaves little room for tenant farmers to adopt environmental land management practices or to pursue nature conservation objectives.
6.03 For these reasons, the farm business tenancy legislation eschewed the legislative approach found in the 1986 Act. In stark contrast to the policy approach underpinning the agricultural holdings legislation, the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 leaves the terms of farm business tenancies largely to the free negotiation of landlord and tenant. This was considered in Chapter 3 above.2 This chapter will focus on the statutory framework for the terms of tenancies of agricultural holdings under the 1986 Act, including rent review. Although this chapter is primarily concerned with the obligations of landlord and tenant under a 1986 Act tenancy, it is important to note that some of the matters discussed here also have relevance to some farm business tenancies – it is, for example, very common for the parties to a farm business tenancy to incorporate into the tenancy agreement the rules of good husbandry, or the model clauses as to the repair and maintenance of fixed equipment.