Institute of

BW Farm Economics

Farm and Enterprise Structures

Collage of different photos for agricultural and business structures

The agricultural sector of today is hardly comparable to what it was 30 years ago. During this time period the used acreage only slightly reduced but about two thirds of the farms in West Germany closed down by now (ca. 890 000 farms). Consequently, the remaining farms have increased their used acreage considerably. Partially aided by new financial models, at the moment large, complex companies increasingly develop, that try to use technical possibilities as well as the economic and legal framework in the best way. In regions with a high density of pig and poultry as well as in East Germany, where large companies and large plots dominate agricultural structures, there are developments which considering the aims of agricultural policy one needs to question.

There is only little sound knowledge of new investment and management models, since these are hardly collected through official statistics. Being aware of structures, their development and essential factors influencing them is however an important pre-condition to design effective policy measures

Therefore, at the Institute of Farm Economics we investigate the following research questions:

What is the status quo and which development tendencies exist regarding farm and business structures?
Which new ownership and management systems are in place? What are their drivers and how do they influence production volume and systems, competition and company structures?
How is the data availability regarding farm and enterprise structures and in the case of deficits how could data collection be improved?
Which economic and legal factors mainly influence farm and business structures?
Which impact on farm and business structures can we expect from political measures targeting farm structures?

At the moment, questions regarding farm and business structures as well as modern ownership and managements systems are in the focus. In our research we apply different methods which depending on the topic are combined.

Ongoing Projects Finished Projects

Ongoing Projects

5-State-Evaluation: Effects of farm income diversification support

Agricultural holdings face permanent pressure to adjust in order to remain or gain competitiveness. In doing so, many farm managers decide to establish additional sources of income. The state supports these structural adjustments via investment support and advisory services. We investigate the opportunities and obstacles of diversification as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of the support measures.

5-State-Evaluation: Effects of farm investment support

Investments in machinery and buildings are crucial for farmers to stay competitive. The state supports such investments through grants. We investigate the effectiveness of these support measures.

Agriculture: farm diversity and change

Farm structures are constantly changing – they must, if they respond to competition. However, how well do we know the current farm structures? Available statistics only provide limited information. Therefore, in this project we intend to initially identify the exact knowledge gaps and later develop approaches to close them.

Company succession and business start-ups in agriculture

The number of agricultural enterprises in Germany has been declining for many years. The role played by unsecured farm succession in structural change, also known as "farm death", and the relevance attributed to non-family farm transfers and business start-ups is being investigated in this project.

How is beef produced

International comparative analysis of beef production within the agri benchmark Beef and Sheep Network

LAMASUS - Modellierung von Landnutzung und -management für eine nachhaltige Steuerung

LAMASUS - LAnd use and MAnagement modelling for SUStainable governance

The Thünen agricultural atlas

The German agricultural statistics are an important source of information to assess environmental impacts and to estimate agricultural trends. Unfortunately, the access to this information is limited through data protection rules. This was the reason why the project Agraratlas was initialized, to generate a data set at community level on land use and live stocks, without restrictions but fulfilling all data security issues at the same time.

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Finished Projects

Cost structures in beef production

Is there an opportunity to estimate national cost share structures in beef finishing? Production costs for beef finishing are determined by several components. Their influence can vary a lot between the different countries. However it is difficult to find consistent data between different countries to be able to compare the costs for beef finishing. Nevertheless these data are the basis for example Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) market models.

Establishment of various income source in agriculture: What can be achieved via subsidies?

Impact analysis of public support of income diversification in agricultural holdings in the framework of monitoring and ongoing evaluation of six state programmes for rural development during the years 2007-2013

Explaining and predicting farm structural change

The EU commission annually develops a projection of the future development in agriculture to detect trends as early as possible. Until now, the structure of farms played only a minor role. A greater consideration of the structure of farms would increase the quality of the projections, particularly after the reorientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013. The impact of the “Greening” of the first Pillar is closely related to the productive orientation of a farm – e.g., whether a farm produces as grassland farm rather milk or as arable farm cereals. Main objective of this project ...

Explaining, predicting and linking European farm structural change with the European farm supply model IFM-CAP

How is the German horticultural sector doing?

How profitable is German horticultural production, what are its production structures, its value chains, its market outlets and who provides advisory services? We want to thoroughly decribe and analyse the current situation.

MIND STEP - Modelling INdividual Decisions to Support The European Policies related to agriculture

MIND STEP addresses the Work Programme Topic RUR-04-2018-2019, contributing to Rural Renaissance by further developing analytical tools and models to support policies related to agriculture and food. Agricultural policies like the EU CAP are widening the scope to contribute to the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainability Development Goals. From the Commission's legislative proposals (June 2018) it is expected that the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be redesigned in line with this. Consequences are among others a move of the CAP to farm specific measures and ...

Modelling farm structural change

The number of farms has declined by 50 % over the last 20 years. There is no end in sight to the rapid structural change.