Written by: Sara Hageman Schenck, Managing Broker
The call usually sounds the same. Somebody’s parent died, the farm came to them and two siblings, and none of them live in Indiana. They’ve got a tenant they’ve never met, a lease they’ve never read, and a tax bill that showed up in the mail.
The first thing we tell people is that they don’t have to decide anything yet.
Inherited ground brings a lot of pressure to move fast. A farmer wants to know about next season. A sibling wants their share. Somebody has already offered to buy it. None of that requires an answer this month, and the decisions made in the first ninety days after a funeral are the ones people call us to undo.
Find out what you own first.
Seven things to find out before you decide anything
1. What you actually own, on paper. Deeded acres, tillable acres, and what somebody told you at Thanksgiving are three different numbers. Get the legal description and the current deed. Acreage in a family story is wrong more often than it’s right.
2. Who’s farming it, and under what. There may be a written lease. There may be a handshake going back two generations. There may be nothing at all, in which case state law decides how and when the arrangement can change. Find out which one you have before you say anything to the farmer.
3. What the rent is, and when it was set. Write down the rate and the year it last changed. That second number tells you more than the first one does.
4. The FSA records. The Farm Service Agency keeps the official file on your farm: base acres, program yields, who’s signed up for what, and who’s receiving the payments. Ownership changes have to be recorded there. This is the step that gets skipped most often, and it’s the one that quietly costs money.
5. The condition of the ground. Soil tests, fertility history, drainage tile, waterways, any conservation practices under contract. A farm that’s been mined for yield and a farm that’s been maintained look identical from the road.
6. What’s obligated. Wind or solar leases, pipeline or transmission easements, CRP contracts, mineral rights, hunting leases. Some of these outlast you. Some were signed by somebody who never told the family.
7. Who else has a claim. Co-heirs, life estates, a surviving spouse’s rights, an outstanding mortgage. If you own it with siblings, the ownership structure matters more than the acreage does.
That list takes a few weeks to work through, and it’s worth every day of it. Every real decision you’re going to make depends on those answers.
Then you’ve got three honest choices
Keep it and stay hands-on. Some owners do this well from a distance. It works when you’ve got a good farmer, a fair written lease, current FSA records, and somebody local you trust to go look at the farm.
Keep it and hire it out. A farm manager runs the business side: the tenant, the lease, the rent, the bills and taxes, the field inspections, the FSA work, and the reporting back to you. You still own it and you still make the calls. Somebody else does the running. Here’s what a year of that actually looks like.
Sell it. There’s no shame in this and we’d rather say it plainly than talk you out of it. Land held by heirs who don’t want it, can’t get to it, and can’t agree tends to decline. If selling is where the family lands, the question becomes timing and method.
We don’t push owners toward any of the three. Which one fits depends on the family, and the family usually needs the information from the list above before they can even have the conversation.
What we see go wrong
Selling in the first year without knowing what it’s worth. Values move differently across the state. Purdue’s June 2026 survey found Northeast Indiana farmland down between 13.9% and 17.1% while top-quality land in the Southwest was up 10.7%, in the same twelve months. A statewide headline number is no substitute for an appraisal of your farm.
Leaving the FSA file alone. Records don’t update themselves when ownership changes.
Letting a lease run on autopilot. Rates set a decade ago by somebody who isn’t here to explain them.
Siblings negotiating with each other through the farmer. It puts him in a position nobody should be in, and it damages a relationship you may need for years.
Nobody going to look at the farm. Ground no owner has seen in three years is ground that stops getting attention, and over time it shows.
The lanes we don’t cross
Probate, estate structure, stepped-up basis, capital gains, and how the ground should be titled are questions for your attorney and your accountant. We won’t guess at them and we’d rather you didn’t either. What we’ll do is give you the real estate and farm side in writing, and talk to your professionals directly if that saves you from playing telephone.
If you’re overseas
A meaningful share of the ground we manage belongs to European families, some of them into a third generation with this firm. The practical problems are the same as any absentee owner’s, plus banking, currency, and a time difference. That work can be done in German with Hinnerk Wolters on our team.
Foreign ownership of US farmland also carries federal reporting obligations, and state rules vary. The filings themselves go through your attorney or accountant and the USDA Farm Service Agency office. What we do is flag them early and make sure the right people are in the room before a deadline matters.
Where to start
Here’s how farm management works for owners who live out of state or overseas.
The list above is the short version. The Owner Who Isn’t There is the long one, and it’s free.
If you’d rather talk it through first, call us. Bringing us a farm you inherited last month doesn’t commit you to anything, and we’d rather answer questions early than clean something up later.
Source: Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture, Indiana Farmland Values and Cash Rents Survey, June 2026 (PAER-2026-24).
