Farming sector long term trends
Looking back over the five years this reporting has been conducted, one remarkable trend is the steady nature of the arable land market. While there have been minor fluctuations in sales volumes, the trend of steadily rising values continues, seemingly impervious to wider market sentiment. Agents relay that good farmland will always find buyers, and ongoing consolidation within the agriculture sector means neighbours are often willing to pay a premium to expand their holdings next door. This does mean that quality agricultural land ownership is concentrating, and that there are fewer opportunities for new entrants or smaller farmers to acquire land.
At the other end of the spectrum, grazing land has seen wild spikes in value, largely due to forestry and speculative natural capital investment in recent years. What might be being seen now is how this past behaviour is beginning to affect food prices. After several years of taking such land out of agricultural production it possibly isn’t a surprise that livestock prices have jumped and remain around recent highs as supply has fallen.
This highlights the real-world impact of how changes in the rural land market around land use motivations can manifest in the cost of the weekly shop. In this light, rising food prices could be seen another unintended consequence of the open and unregulated land market, where the interests and motivations of landowners take precedence over wider public interest.
