Photo: Jens Dresling
Institutional investors set to take over swathes of Danish agriculture
14,000 farmers in Denmark are expected to have retired by 2030. This could pave the way for land acquisitions and agricultural ventures at a completely new scale, says think tank and media outlet Mandag Morgen.
BY OLE ANDERSEN, KAPITALWATCH, TRANSLATED BY CATHERINE BRETT
The Danish agricultural sector is facing a generational shift, as 14,000 farmers are expected to have retired by 2030. This means that ownership of Danish farmland will also be transformed, as thousands of independent farmers with high levels of debt will need to sell at prices that are unaffordable to younger farmers. That could pave the way for land acquisitions and agricultural ventures at a new scale, writes Mandag Morgen.
”An agriculture transformation is unavoidable,” says Mette Asmild, professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen.
According to the think tank, which publishes weekly analyses of pressing issues as well as thematic articles, some of the new land owners could be pension funds, foreign investment banks, or other players with a strong capital base. Seen from the perspective of foreign investors, Danish land prices are pretty attractive, and are far lower than prices in Germany and the Netherlands, for example.
Since 2015, foreign investors have also benefitted from one of Europe’s most liberal foreign ownership laws when investing in Denmark.
(This article was provided by our Danish sister media, KapWatch.dk)
