On Monday 5 December, the European Parliament agriculture committee discussed the own initiative report by Maria Noichl (S&D, Germany) on the concentration of agricultural land in the EU and how to facilitate access to land for farmers.
In her draft report, Noichl shows that land grabbing, which is often associated with developing countries, is also taking place in the EU (In Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria in particular). Added to this is the artificialisation of the soil due to urbanisation. The net effect is a considerable shortage of land to sell and leasing prices that bear no relation to the achievable agricultural return.
To address this situation, she proposes improving market transparency by setting up a central observatory responsible for monitoring the extent of concentration of agricultural land and gathering harmonised data on land purchases and leasing in the EU. She calls on the European Commission to draft and table a set of criteria that will allow the member states to determine clearly the measures they will able to adopt to regulate the land market.
The report highlights that a number of common agricultural policy (CAP) measures can play a role: a cap of €150,000 on direct payments, 30% of direct payments linked to the first hectares of the farm, and a definition of “active farmer” to be applied throughout the EU (taking account of the notion of professional activity).
The Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament organised a conference on this issue on 7 December. Land speculation and concentration of land are a growing threat for small and average-sized family farms and new entrants to the sector, the organisers of the event argue. Soil is a difficult issue to deal with at EU level. In May 2014, the Commission had to withdraw its proposal for a framework-directive on soil protection. The text had been at a standstill in the Council since 2006, with some member states (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Austria in particular) taking the view that this policy should remain a national competence. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)