The farmers suffer particularly from the surface consumption. A farm with 30 hectares of agricultural land is lost every three days. So much open landscape will be converted into building land for apartments, businesses and transport routes in this period. But that’s not all. Farmers who want to find replacements or expand their farms are struggling with the explosion in real estate prices.
A hectare of agricultural land cost an average of 63,086 euros in Bavaria in 2020, compared to 25,866 euros in 2010. The regional differences are immense. In booming Upper Bavaria, a farmer recently had to shell out 112,118 euros for a hectare of agricultural land, in Upper Franconia it was 24,738 euros. Experts suspect that the reason for the price explosion is that financial investors in Bavaria also like to invest their money in agricultural land.
The state parliament Greens now want to curb speculation with fields, fields, meadows and pastures by law. “If a farmer – for whatever reason – sells his land, it must under no circumstances become an object of speculation,” says Gisela Sengl, an organic farmer and member of the Green Party. “They should be preserved for other farmers.” The draft law that the Greens group is bringing to the state parliament this Tuesday goes well beyond the previous requirements for the sale of agricultural land.
For example, the purchase and lease prices for agricultural land are to be capped at a maximum of 20 percent above the local level, the period for exercising the right of first refusal that farmers have for agricultural land is to be doubled from the previous six weeks to three months, and relief is to be provided for give the real estate transfer tax. In addition, share purchases are to be made more difficult so that financial investors no longer have easy access to agricultural land.
With the draft law, the Greens are taking up a homework task that the federal government had already given the states in the federalism reform of 2006. “Instead of taking care of an agricultural land ownership law, Prime Minister Markus Söder and Co accept that Bavarian food is becoming more and more expensive,” says Sengl. “Because that’s the logical consequence when the farmers in Bavaria have to pay ever higher prices for the coveted agricultural land.”
In addition, according to Sengl’s assessment, urgency is required. “In the next few years, more and more farms will be handed over in Bavaria. Because the baby boomer generation from the 1960s, who are also strongly represented in agriculture, are now retiring,” says the Green politician. “Then a whole series of farms will fall out of management and be up for sale, complete with land.”