That depends on what the current rent is and what kind of tenancy it is. a £60/acre AHA won't stand an £80-90/ac rent reduction, nor would it allow the landowner to claim BPS and Countryside Stewardship (CS). You've got to look at what you are required to do for the landlord's CS and BPS beyond merely cross complying for BPS. For low input and species rich grass attracting hundreds of £/ha in CS payments I can see a lot of less productive land having to pay to find tenants to manage it for them, plus the CS prescriptions will seriously limit what you can do on it.
Perhaps a contract farming agreement would be a better way of sharing the risk of accidentally straying into a CS option with spray drift or a cultivator that jeopardises the landlord's payments?
@westwood - can you give any more details or is just a theoretical discussion? For Grade 3 arable with no cropping restrictions i.e. CS limited to field margins and plots outside the agreement I'd say you might have to pay a bit and "current rent minus BPS" isn't a bad starting point. I've had rent reviews with an institutional landlord where their rent model is based on half the farming profits, so if you're making a rotational crop gross margin of £250/acre minus £100/ac labour & machinery and £50/ac other overheads that's £100/ac margin plus BPS. That suggests around £50/acre rent without BPS then reduce it further for the lack of your opportunity to create your own CS on the more marginal areas. Offer £20/acre rent and start the haggling from there.
