Farm Land Trusts highlighted as model for increasing access to land

The Scottish Land Commission have published a research paper on increasing access to farm land for new entrants. Written by the James Hutton Institute, the report sought to look into joint ventures, tax interventions, land matching services and farm incubators. The Scottish Farm Land Trust (SFLT) featured as a “new model to increase land availability for new entrants.”

The report aimed to highlight some ways forward in a land system which is blocked to new entrants to farming. McKee et al. state that “access to land is consistently found to be the largest barrier to new entrants to farming across Europe,” and that in Scotland “the price of agricultural land is typically higher than could generate a return from agricultural production.”

This clearly shows that new and alternative models are needed in order to make land available for new entrants to farming in Scotland. Farm land trusts are providing such an alternative throughout Europe, which SFLT has experienced first hand in a recent European learning exchange. We visited France and Germany to learn first hand from established land trusts as well as exchanging experiences with emerging land trusts in Czech and Greece. We came back inspired by the tangible impact these organisations are making to new entrants.

The Hutton report also suggested a possible ‘Land Matching Service’ as a way of pairing landowner up with new entrants looking for land. They highlighted the need for trust and relationship building in gaining support of landowners, a sentiment which was shared by European Land Trusts. There is potential for SFLT to manage such a land matching service and we are exploring  how we could develop a brokering service in the near future.