EigLanD-E: farmland ownership structures in Germany

Background and Objective

Farmland ownership has become increasingly important for agricultural policy issues. Guiding principles mention the desired “wide distribution of farmland ownership” and the sale of farmland is to be interdicted by the authorities if it would lead to an “unhealthy distribution of farmland”. However, little is known about ownership’s distribution of agricultural land. There are no statistics on farmland owners, because the way in which owners are recorded in the German land register is not suitable for statistical analysis.

In the previous EigLanD project, we developed and tested a method to process ownership data from the land register. Now, we apply the method to a larger sample of municipalities across Germany in order to produce a robust estimate to describe ownership structures of agricultural land. Building on that we assess possible causes and effects of regional differences in farmland ownership distribution.

Target Group

Agricultural policy makers at the federal and state level, interested members of the public

Approach

We draw a spatially distributed random sample of municipalities covering a total of about four percent of the agricultural area of each German state. We then consolidate and analyse the ownership data from the Official Land Registry Information System (ALKIS).

With the help of algorithms, we identify identical land owners and aggregate them with regard to their economic affiliation. This is the basis for a descriptive analysis of the property distribution according to type and domicile of the owners as well as a calculation of concentration measures.

Building on that, we develop and test hypotheses as to which variables can be attributed to identified regional differences in the distribution of ownership. In addition, we examine whether and how such differences affect local societal developments.

Our Research Questions

• How is agricultural land ownership distributed among different types of owners?
• What proportion of agricultural land is owned by the largest individual owners on site?
• To what can regional differences in distribution of ownership be attributed and what effects do they have on social developments in the regions?

Preliminary Results

In the first step, the research methodology was optimized and applied to a widespread random sample of 387 municipalities in twelve federal states. The results of the descriptive analysis were published in the Thünen Report 116.