TENANT farmers leaders have challenged agricultural landlords to implement better practice in their relationships with farm tenants.

The Tenant Farmers Association’s national chairman, Stephen Wyrill, said there was no justification for farm rent increases on traditional tenancies where rents were last reviewed three years ago.

"Sadly, this has not prevented a number of landlords’ agents from seeking to use inappropriate tactics to pressurise farm tenants into agreeing increases," he said.

Bad practice, Mr Wrill said, had included using the outcome of Scottish agricultural tenancy legal cases to argue that farm business tenancy rents were comparable with those under the 1986 Act in attaching a separate value to the farmhouse to add to a predetermined split of any pre-rent surplus arrived at using a budgetary approach to the rent review.

“The TFA has spent much time in advising members to stand up against such sharp practice and as a result, we are pleased with the number of situations where landlords have indeed backed off from rent increases and in many cases have served new rent review notices for discussions to take place in the following year,” said Mr Wyrill.

He added that the TFA was using the 20th anniversary of farm business tenancies in 2015 to argue that they had been too short for too long.

"Farming is a long-term endeavour requiring significant capital investment, patience, good soil management and the ability to balance profitable years against the bad. None of this is assisted by the shockingly short lengths of term offered on today’s FBTs. The TFA’s FBT10+ campaign seeks to argue that average lengths of term should be 10 years or more,” said Mr Wyrill.