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Impact of land tenure market conditions on the growth of organic and other sustainable farming

Project


Project code: 2811OE126
Contract period: 01.09.2012 - 28.02.2014
Budget: 101,577 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research

Rising land rent prices, a decreasing growth of organic farmland and reports about giving up framing or reversion from organic to conventional agriculture lead to the question, whether organic farms are facing specific obstacles on the land rent market. In case this holds true, reasons for that are to be detected and measures to solve the problems to be suggested. The study aims for a better understanding of market mechanisms, especially the importance of transparency and non-monetary objects for the decisions of tenants und lessors. Therefore, surveys had been done among 400 organic farmers in five regions as well as indepth interviews with 25 land owners. The results had been analysed with quantitative and qualitative methods. It became evident, that farmers in average could enlarge their farms by about 26 % since conversion to organic farming. By now the farms are still bigger than conventional farms in the study area, while organic farms grow not that fast as conventional farms. 70 % of the surveyed organic farms did not face problems on the land rent market since having converted to organic farming. One third od framer reported about problems in getting new contracts as well as in keeping up existing contracts due to rising competitions, rising land prices and difficulties in finding suitable land and lessors. One half of the lessors used to be a farmer by themselves, others inherited land or are representatives of land owning institutions (e.g. municipalities, Church, association). Lessores tend to pay much attention to non-economic objects when starting to make land rent decisions and prefer tenants they know personally, they consider being reliable and of whom they expect a sustainable treatment of their land. The synthesis of results shows, that difficulties of organic farms on the land rent market can be divided into common problems, such as lack of information as well as into eco-specific problems (e.g. reserve of lessors). Recommendations regarding each field of problems are given, how the competitiveness of organic farms could be improved.

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