Who owns the land? Three countries, three answers

The situation in Saxony-Anhalt

In Saxony-Anhalt, the issue of share purchases in agriculture is discussed time and again. The state has a strong agricultural character, while at the same time many farms are organized on a large scale - a structure that in part dates back to GDR times.

The sale of Deutsche Agrar Holding (DAH) to the Australian fund Igneo Infrastructure Partners is an example of this. The left-wing parliamentary group sees dangers and consequences for the agricultural sector in East Germany. The sale is "the first time that a large-scale share purchase of this kind has been carried out in the East German agricultural sector", explained the parliamentary group. The investor now controls more than 20,000 hectares of land. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL) also criticized the takeover.

The Ministry of Agriculture, on the other hand, sees no agri-structural effects. In an answer to a minor question from the Left Party, it states that there has been no concentration of agricultural land. The Left Party disagrees and points to risks such as land concentration, shifts in power on the land market and the possible outflow of profits abroad.

The state government is focusing less on additional legal barriers than on a land fund. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the fund is intended to benefit the agricultural structure. The land should "benefit farmers in particular", primarily through leasing.

The ministry does not currently see a need for additional regulation for share purchases. The responsibility lies with the federal government, it said. In any case, the significance of share deals cannot be reliably assessed due to a lack of data. Only "spectacular individual cases" are known. An "agri-structural risk" is currently not seen.

The Saxony-Anhalt State Farmers' Association is rather skeptical about the land fund. According to the association, an expansion of the existing guidelines is not necessary. At the same time, it emphasized that non-agricultural investors should not be seen as a problem in principle. It is only negative "where it intensifies regional competition for land and thereby increases purchase prices and rents in the surrounding area".

The situation in Saxony

In Saxony, an agricultural structure law is currently off the table, according to the Saxon Ministry of Agriculture and the state farmers' association. The farmers' association points out that in the last legislative period, it "contributed significantly" to the fact that a draft bill for an agricultural structure law was rejected and not pursued further.

According to the farmers' association, the real price drivers on the land market are not the share deals, but "the allocation of BVVG land and ZFM land". This primarily refers to state-influenced land that is allocated via tenders: The federally owned Bodenverwertungs- und -verwaltungsgesellschaft (BVVG) has been privatizing and leasing out formerly state-owned GDR agricultural land since reunification. In Saxony, state-owned agricultural land is also managed by the state-owned company Zentrales Flächenmanagement (ZFM) and mostly leased out.

The Ministry of Agriculture also sees no immediate pressure to act on share deals. Share purchases in the agricultural sector are not systematically recorded in Bavaria either - no data is available, it said. The risk of speculative farm buyers is currently "considered to be low". A precautionary data collection would also "lead to a further increase in bureaucracy".

The situation in Thuringia

As in Saxony, an agricultural structure law is currently no longer an issue in Thuringia. The Thuringian Farmers' Association points out that such a law was rejected in earlier debates because it would have "restricted the entrepreneurial freedom" of farms. In addition, regulations on share purchases in drafts were considered to be constitutionally problematic.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the responsibility for regulating share purchases also lies with the federal government. Attempts to regulate this at state level have always failed in the past.

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