The solar boom is putting pressure on German farmers. Investors often buy large tracts of land to build solar parks. As a result, arable land has become increasingly scarce and expensive for farmers.
8 million euros for 2,600 hectares of farmland – farmer Tobias Lemm is convinced that this is a reasonable price for “Röderland GmbH”. He tried to buy a large dairy farm in Brandenburg with an offer. But then what happened to many farmers is going through right now: an investor got the better of him.
Big investors are increasingly buying farmland at prices farmers can’t match. This has had dramatic consequences: From 2010 to 2020, farmland prices in the country rose by an average of 126%. Because there is very little free arable land in Germany – so they are getting more and more expensive. That’s why lease prices have also risen sharply — an average of 62 percent, according to the federal Agricultural Information Center.
Quarterback-AG, one of Germany’s largest real estate developers, was behind the lead investor who outbid Tobias Slem. Quarterbacks look for safety gains in times of rising rates.
Solar parks as an investment
But there are other bidders besides the big investors: power producers. Since solar parks can make a lot of money at the moment, they are also interested in the area of solar parks. Energy provider EnBW, for example, is bidding to install thousands of solar panels in eastern Germany.
Thorsten Jörs is a project manager at EnBW and leads the company’s photovoltaic division. He is responsible for meeting the need for additional solar areas: “In my view, we are actually at the beginning of a new solar boom. We want to triple solar expansion in the next few years.” Specifically, this means that the The company intends to build 10 to 15 solar parks per year.
To be successful, available land is needed – which is why more and more companies are buying farmland. Silvia Bender, State Secretary at the Berlin Ministry of Agriculture, is very concerned about current trends: “Non-agricultural investors are flooding the land market, and life is becoming increasingly difficult for farmers.” Solar panels may increasingly crowd out farms.
Investors drive out farmers
Quarterback Immobilien-AG paid 10 million euros for a dairy farm in Brandenburg. She wants to keep running the farm and build a solar park. But why did Röderland GmbH sell it to a real estate company and not to an agricultural colleague who had been trying to buy it? “The shareholders decided to keep the farm stable, and the purchase price was undoubtedly another decisive factor,” explains Steffen Höppner, Managing Director of Röderland GmbH.
The Röderland farm was attractive to Quarterback-AG because they could build a solar park here without complex approval procedures. Because the Ministry of Economy has recently removed barriers and deregulated in the context of the energy crisis. Large solar parks can now be built on rail lines and highways without complex approval from the community.
Die from farming?
Brandenburg’s agriculture minister, Axel Vogel, was critical and wanted to block the quarterback trade. Secretary Vogel has been planning a new agricultural structure law for years – so far without success: “Agricultural land laws simply don’t apply anymore. We hardly have any cases of practical application.” Moreover, agricultural structure is happening significantly Changes: “More and more regions are being taken over by off-farm investors.”
To prevent this, Vogel explained, tools such as price regulation that protect individual farmers are needed. Traditional farmers will find it increasingly difficult to survive if the income from growing food is lower than that from solar power.