Value of land

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
Was think about this, particularly with relevance to what is happening in Wales where land is being bought up for tree's. Do we need a different model for this now?

Fundamentally, is this land valued correctly now?

Not in farming terms, but in it's value to the financial houses (the other party). This probably mostly effects what we might have called "unproductive" land before. I understand the first farm being sold off, when no one understood what they were trying to do, but surely this land is now asking £15-20k an acre. For any financial house that asks.

I could then at least see the farmers are making good money out of selling the land, even if I don't agree with the carbon-maths behind what they are doing with those acres.
 
Coppied from facebook. Sky News reported last night that the price of a loaf of bread in the UK could rise to over £3 as a result of the war in Ukraine. Last year the UK imported 2,370,000 tonnes of wheat from across the globe to supply the home market. The highest figure within the last five years.

Fertiliser prices have almost trebled and many UK farmers may be forced to farm with limited or even no fertiliser inputs to the land. If this is the case, crop yields including arable and grass will be severly affected.

UK self sufficiency in home- grown food is already falling alarmingly year upon year. Before long, more than half of the food we eat will be imported. There will be no cheap imported food to replace the shortfall. We could be in serious trouble.

Meanwhile government focuses on tree- planting, unregulated greenwashing of UK land and nature recovery. Farm by farm we are already beginning to lose productive farm land.

In Cumbria moorland is being offered for sale on the open market, under a marketing campaign to promote its value for amongst other things, carbon- offsetting.

Several acres of a local former dairy farm that was once cut for silage and grazed by cows has been sold on and is now covered in a swathe of tree guards, lost for all time to food production.

it is also rumoured that another substantial beef and sheep farm close to home has been sold in its entirety to be tree- planted. Time will tell, but all of this is the thin end of the wedge. Such greenwashing is unregulated and appears to be positively supported by government judging by the direction of travel in rural policy. Farmers are being blown out of the market. I do not blame the vendors of the land or the agents. We would all do the same.

It is clear that we can expect much more of this in future, with premiums paid for productive farm land from outside investors desperate to mitigate but not necessarily reduce their industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions or wider carbon foot print, but what is the true cost?

The true cost is the loss of productive farmland that will be needed more than ever by successive generations. In decades to come our future families will know hunger. Hunger caused by climate change, disease, war and an ever expanding UK and global population.

And what of the farming families, described within Cumbria's Local Industrial Strategy (2019) as the social glue that unites rural Cumbria, providers of food and the landscapes loved by so many?

In parts of rural Cumbria tenanted farms will not be re- let. They will be taken back in hand by estates and private landlords to plant trees and in future satisfy a growing global carbon market. it is happening now, right here in Cumbria.

Very sadly, some very talented young people who want to farm for the future, will never get the chance. I know some of them. Once farming families leave remote rural communities, what is left? a handful of second homes and Air B&B's. Is this the future of rural Cumbria?

I am appalled at what is happening in Ukraine. I'm also appalled that it takes a dreadful war such as this for only one mainstream UK broadcaster to wake up and smell the coffee, if not the bread!

"The price of a loaf of bread could hit £3". Woopee- do! To the rest of us that live and breath the future of rural Cumbria, it's a wake up call to a fragile reality. Our food security year by year, month by month is going out of the window.

This current state of affairs is so frustratingly sad. Given the right policies and support, we could make our home grown supply of food far more sustainable and return our natural environment to the best state it has been for generations. Lots of tree- planting, but only in the right places. Lot's of habitat creation. Cleaner air and water, all within a farmed landscape producing more food. it is possible!

No one ever really believed there could be a war in Europe in the modern era. As climate change bites in future and global supplies of food and fresh water grow scarcer, the pressure is only going to grow. Importing more and more food from across the world, whilst we plant trees in the wrong place, is absolute folly.

Recently a local conservationist working with farmers told a visiting government minister that 1,000,000 trees could be planted in the right places in one small valley, and he would barely be able to tell the difference in the farmed landscape.

All we need is balance and a rural agenda that incorporates sustainable food production and an improved natural environment. Government has told us how many trees we must plant in the next 20 years, but it has no idea nor any desire to engage on how much food we will need to grow to sustain the UK population, This must change before it is too late.

There is a very honest and challenging debate that needs to take place in the county of Cumbria right now. I'd love to see Cumbria's MP's discuss this in a public forum. Sadly i don't know who is strong enough to make it happen.

£3 per loaf???? This should be a massive wake- up call.
 

Flatlander

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lorette Manitoba
The way fuel prices are going and energy in general usage will be lower so off setting carbon won’t seem so important, with a major player in the food production sanctioned out of the world games feeding the population will be a more realistic goal.
 

jacobl741

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Buxton
Land value going up near us
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Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
I wouldn't lose any sleep over what people are prepared to pay for land in odd places.
I drive by a 5 acre field that is between blocks of land I own and farm. My Grandmother bought it in 1927 for £120 and then my Father sold it after the war to a neighbour for £180 when he needed to buy some other land. He always reckoned it was the worst field in the area.

Ironically he bought it back when the neighbour sold up in the 1960's and bought a 200 acre farm without the farmhouse but a pair of cottages for £70k, sold off the cottages for £20k and the 5 acre field for £1500.

Two years ago the 5 acre field came up for sale again and was sold for £75k. A couple have bought it and are planting trees etc in it, all without grants. It would not surprise me if one day I bought it back again for £25k.
We have a lot of land in the Weald that has grown trees, been cleared and farmed and then put back to trees!! Hundreds of acres were planted with Sweet Chestnut for Hop Poles, timber for building and of course fencing posts and stakes in the Middle Ages.
 
Land will hit £30k per acre in this country. It might blip short term due to the war and after effects of the virus but long term it’ll continue to rise because we are a tiny little island already with 68 million inhabitants. As the population increases so does land price.

To many people think land price is connected to farming it. It’s not and hasn’t been for 30 years.
 

midlandslad

Member
Location
Midlands
Land will hit £30k per acre in this country. It might blip short term due to the war and after effects of the virus but long term it’ll continue to rise because we are a tiny little island already with 68 million inhabitants. As the population increases so does land price.

To many people think land price is connected to farming it. It’s not and hasn’t been for 30 years.
Do you think the war and virus will have a negative impact?
 

DJHay

New Member
If/when they reduce/stop Agricultural Property Relief we might see prices drop. Farmers likely to lose out in that scenario too through reduction in tax relief on death, could be the argument.
 
Do you think the war and virus will have a negative impact?
Yes temporary blip as mentioned. More hesitation than price drop but inflation and interest rate concerns.
8 weeks ago 150ac sold for £22k/ac bare land localish. 110ac being offered again localish for the last 3 weeks and very little interest so far.
 

icanshootwell

Member
Location
Ross-on-wye
We been paying more than £3 a loaf for years now, but we do support a local bakery that bakes bread the old fashioned way,eg the yeast has time to prove, even the ducks at the park waddle on past the supermarket 40p a loaf sh#t, no wonder so many have intolerances eating that stuff, a loaf of bread is not supposed to last over a week.
Also on food price in general, surly its needs to rise, isn,t it like 25% of food purchased that gets wasted every day!!
 

midlandslad

Member
Location
Midlands
The rise in interest rates not only impacts the amount that the farmer can borrow, but also will put pressure on those with sizeable borrowings and the banks will increase their stress test making harder further to borrow, further exaggerated by the .

In areas with a lot of development rollover money this will have limited impact but it may start reducing the number of farmer buyers.

Do you think the jump in farm gate prices will impact on land values?
 

Nearly

Member
Location
North of York
Gold has increased in price compared to bitcoin etc.
You can usually tempt someone to part with something in exchange for heavy yellow metal but if there's no electric and Putin drops an emf bomb then bitcoin isn't worth bit.
Land is less tradable in a barter society but the stuff that grows on it can be pretty useful.

Tax relief holds the key to land value above the ag value. The ag value is likely to increase in line with current general inflation but we'll be no better off.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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