The farm lease is a contract of lease which falls within the more general category of rural leases. This category of leases concerns the organization of the exercise of an activity agricultural in rural areas.

A farm lease is entered into between an owner (lessor) of land or buildings for agricultural use and an operator (or so-called lessee) who becomes a tenant.

It's a special rural lease because it's subject to a set of mandatory rules called the tenancy status (or lease-to-farm status). The purpose of these rules is to stabilize the situation of the licensee by creating a protective framework for his activity. In particular, they guarantee a certain operating period, rent control or a right to renewal of the lease.

Farm leases are the type of rural leases most common.

The lease-to-farm status (or rental status) means the set of rules obligatory which the lessor (owner) and the lessee (lessee) cannot waive when its conditions are met. It is then said that this status is a matter of public order.

There are 3 situations in which the status of rental applies in its entirety to the contract:

• When the 3 essential features of the status of the farm are present.
• Where the proposed activity is listed in the list agricultural activities which are subject to the Staff Regulations.
• Where the contract is assimilated by law a farm lease which is subject to the Staff Regulations.

Essential characteristics of the status of tenancy

The status of the rental is obligatorily applied to a contract when it presents all of the following :

• Making available of a building for agricultural use, i.e. land (or plots), farm buildings and/or a dwelling.
• Operation of this building for to engage in an agricultural activity. These activities include:
  
  • Control and exploitation of a life cycle (or even only one stage of the life cycle) of a plant or animal character. This activity includes, for example, livestock rearing.
  • Activities which are an extension of the act of production or which are based on the exploitation of a life cycle. This corresponds, for example, to the processing and packaging of farm products into cheeses, jams, cooked meats, the marketing of farm products, or agritourism.
• Character expensive of the contract. The rural lease must therefore provide for consideration to be paid by the lessee (lessee), that is to say, in almost all cases, a rent (called the leasing). The amount of this rent is regulated by law.

Leases subject to the status of rental because of the nature of the activity

Lessor and tenant are sometimes obliged to subject their lease to the status of rental only because of the nature of the activity exercised. This concerns the following activities:

• Ground and beekeeping leases
• Salt marsh operating leases
• Pond leases and ponds for fish farming
• Leases of horticultural establishments
• Leases for vegetable and mushroom cultivation
• Certain equestrian activities (maintenance and preparation of equidae, except performing activities)

Contracts treated as farm leases

Some contracts are assimilated by law to farm leases, when they in fact have all the characteristics of the leases. The status of leasing is therefore compulsory for them. The contracts that the act treats as farm leases are as follows:

• Sale of grass : a landowner sells the grass from his meadow to a farmer who makes the haymaking or grazing their animals there. When this sale of grass is granted by the owner every year to the same farmer, it shall be considered as a rural lease subject to the Staff Regulations (This is not the case, for example, where grass sales are occasional, irregular and involve different buyers: in this case it is not a rural lease because its characteristics are not met).
  More generally, this applies to all contracts of exclusive disposal of fruit : These are contracts in which the owner regularly transfers the totality of the fruits of its exploitation to a purchaser who undertakes to harvest them. These contracts shall be treated as leases on farms subject to the status of leasing.
• Repurchase of animals : an owner of agricultural land or buildings warns, monitors, feeds and treats third-party animals for payment. When the obligations in principle, the owner of the land or building is effectively executed by the owner of the animals (e.g. the obligation to maintain the land, repair fences, hedge hedges...), then the contract is a rural lease obligatorily subject to the status of rental.

In some cases, although the conditions for application of the status are met, the lessor (owner) and the lessee (lessee) may exclude certain rules which are in principle mandatory. Thus, part of the content of the lease can be negotiated more freely between them.

Sometimes the application of the status is very residual and confined to a single rule.

The leases partially subject to the status of rental are as follows:

Some contracts are totally excluded the status of the farm lease, even if they have all the characteristics of the lease.

These include:

• Leasing of forests or forest-related property.
• Lease concluded to insure maintenance of a plot of land near a dependency of a residential complex. This is the case, for example, when the owner of a plot of wood attached to a house enters into a maintenance agreement with a third party, and that third party only maintains the plot without ever exploiting or cultivating it.
• Precarious occupation agreement (COP) allowing the lessee (operator) and his spouse or past partner to remain on the premises when the lease has expired or terminated and has not been renewed.
• COP for exploiting agricultural assets dependent on a succession where the succession is the subject of legal proceedings or where the the division results from a decision of a judge.
• COP allowing temporary exploitation property (parcels of land and/or buildings) whose main use is not agricultural footprint, or whose agricultural use must cease.
• Provision of parcels for the benefit of a business, where the lessor (owner) participates in the holding itself within this business.
• Certain specific leases covered by the Act, including long-term leases, the component leases, livestock leases, hunting and fishing leases, leases for pleasure gardens and gardens of family interest, or multi-annual agricultural or grazing agreements.
• Lease entered into for the benefit of a lessee who is neither French nor EU citizenEU (EU) (there are, however, some exceptions in which the status of rental may apply).

Under these various contracts, the farmer cannot benefit from the rights attached to the status of the farm. He cannot therefore benefit from a lease of at least 9 years, rent control or the right to renewal of the lease.