Timed to coincide with the popular yearly Salon de l’agriculture, the largest agricultural fair in France, two associations have raised the alarm over the profound changes in ownership of agricultural land in France which is making it increasingly difficult, notably for the younger generation, to enter into farming activity.
One of the associations is Terre de liens, which buys farms and agricultural land as they come up for sale and rents them out to young farmers committed to employing organic methods, and who have insufficient funds to otherwise rent or purchase a property.
The association carried out a study of who owns agricultural land in France, the first major survey of the sort in the country since 1992. In a 70-page report published on Tuesday, entitled La propriété des terres agricoles en France. À qui profite la terre ? (“Ownership of agricultural land in France: who profits from the land?”), it details its findings, which were partly based on research by the CEREMA, a public body which advises on town and country planning policies, working under the auspices of the ecological transition ministry.
In parallel, the French NGO Les Amis de la Terre, part of the worldwide Friends of the Earth network, has also prepared a report which denounces the increasing takeover of agricultural land by the agribusiness and other private investors.
Two important developments emerge from the reports, and which were overlooked by an inventory of farming activities published early last year by the agriculture ministry (and which reported the disappearance of 101,000 farms between 2010 and 2020).
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The first of these is that French agricultural land is increasingly divided into small holdings. There are currently more than four million smallholders, with plots of land that are of an average surface area of five hectares (equivalent to about seven football pitches). This fragmentation of plots appears likely to increase given that around half of current smallholders are aged over 65. The inheritance of agricultural land frequently results in it being split into joint-ownerships, which can potentially reduce or end its use for farming.
The other development is the arrival, over the past two decades, of a new type of owner of farming land. These are large agricultural companies, some of which include investors with no links to farming activities, and which are involved in intensive farming.
That evolution is the subject of the report by Les Amis de la Terre, which highlights that the land bought by such companies can sometimes cover a surface area of several thousand hectares, whose activities create few jobs and serve in part as a barrier to the development of ecological methods of farming. One example of this is the sale last December of 2,121 hectares of arable land in west-central France to a private company for more than 10 million euros.
According to the separate study by Terre de liens, the amount of land owned by such private companies quadrupled between 1992 and 2002 to reach 7.5% of the total agricultural surface area. It estimates that the “financialized” agricultural businesses now “possess 640,000 hectares of land and control 14% of the agricultural surface area”. In its report, the association rhetorically asked: “Is there not a risk that the remuneration of these investors […] orients agricultural activity, the choice of cultures and practices, to the detriment of more resilient agricultural methods, [which are] adapted to climate change?”
It reported that in 1930, around 60% of cultivated land was worked upon by its owner, whereas today that is true of just 35%. “Contrary to the Épinal print image [caricature] of the farmer who owns his land, the majority of them rent all or a part of the land that they cultivate,” it said. The study estimated that 17 million hectares of farmed land in France is rented by those who work it.
All of which makes it more and more difficult for those who do not come from a farming family to establish a farm and who, the report said, “must often pay higher prices, whether that be to buy or rent land, and which acts as a proper brake on setting up [a farm]”. Terre de liens reported that tenant farmers in France have, on average, 14 different land owners to deal with. “To take over a farm with rented land can prove complex, when it is necessary to negotiate not with one or two, but with around ten different owners,” it said.
Sometimes the difficulty is simply too great. In the northern region of the Hauts-de-France, which includes Normandy, some tenant farmers face the illegal practice of having to make a down payment of “key money” to the outgoing farm proprietor. For the rental of a 70-hectare farm this can amount to 350,000 euros.
Terre de liens proposes the creation of an “observatory” to bring greater transparency to land ownership, and to counter the trend of financialization of agricultural surfaces.
The association also underlined, like numerous others over recent months, the widespread development of the creation of photovoltaic parks on farmland, where energy companies pay farmers to use their land, and which encourages a reduction in agricultural use.
Meanwhile, a change in urban planning regulations now allows some farmland, previously protected from development, to be built upon. “From one day to the next, the same land is on average sold at a price 25 times higher,” the association reported. In peri-urban areas in particular, owners hoping to soon benefit from the regulatory changes let their farmland lie fallow.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.