"BIA's Sweeping Reform" of Land Leasing

Click this link to see the Federal Register Release on the BIA's Sweeping Reform of the Federal Leasing Process.

In the proposed reform as seen on the above page, you will note the severe restrictions on Direct Pay Options. If you have 11 landowners on a piece of land, there will be no more direct pay. It will only be allowed on land with 10 owners or less.

And ALL 10 owners have to consent to the Direct Pay. This is a specific slant against direct pay, otherwise, you would have a proposed regulation that says that whatever the "majority" of landowners agree to, is what should be enacted on a lease. Besides that, according to the current CFR, Direct pay is an option already on the books and 100% is NOT REQUIRED for you to receive direct pay from your farmer. This will have disastrous results!

If OST comes in and requires a farmer to pay them for your lease by November 1st, you will not have any option to play the market and you will not get anything that says anything about your harvest.

All you're going to get is a check. There is nothing else given. You don't know WHEN your crop was sold, HOW much crop you had, WHAT THE PRICE/BUSHEL was for your crop. What a wonderful way for accountability to fly out the window with your crop.

This is a policy in direct opposition to Crop Revenue Sharing. There will be confusion and as usual the OST will listen to their finance clerk in Albuquerque who knows nothing of agricultural marketing/harvesting operations.

This should be at least one point that tribes and tribal members should be in opposition to in this proposed regulation.

Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk said on Native Times, "The revised regulations will bring greater transparency, efficiency and workability to the Bureau of Indian Affairs approval process, and will provide tribal communities and individuals certainty and flexibility when it comes to decisions on the use of their land.”

So how is it when I have a gross revenue crop share lease where my farmer pays me with a weighed share of my crops that, under this new leasing reform, I am going to get transparency, efficiency and workability? Under this proposed reform, all I am going to get is a check and that's it. The check doesn't even say what it's for. It doesn't tell me what my crops sold for, when they were sold, or what the total bushel per acre for my allotment was.

You know a funny thing about those crops: There is no guarantee that the protein levels for your crops can be determined before November 1st. There is no guarantee that the quality of the crop versus weed and waste content can be determined before November 1st. They do a seed test on many crops which takes about a month to determine if your seed crops are quality that can be sold. So, how am I going to get a check for my "supposedly sold" crop when it hasn't even been divided up and tested yet? Sometimes the crops in bumper years aren't totally quality-checked until March because of the backlog.

But rest assured, that ONE FINANCE CLERK at OST will rest easy knowing that all the numbers line up nice and straight.

This is a horrible piece of this reform. The current 25 CFR 162. 226 states the lease can be negotiated for "DIRECT PAY" from the farmer or operator. 162.227 even stipulates how payment must be made under Direct Pay options.

There will be even more confusion now for our poor OST Clerk in Albuquerque because, how in the world will they pay land owners who have Crop Revenue Share leases? Legally by November 1st? Talk about Trust Mismanagement! A clear case for screwing the land owners again. How long ago was the Cobell suit? The ink's not even dry and now this!