Le financement du foncier rural

Price of farmland in England and Wales rose ninefold between 1955 and 1975 and well over tenfold between 1955 and the peak value £1,450 par hectare reached in 1974. Anyone buying land at any time from 1945 onwards and holding it for five years would never have failed to make a gain. It is evident that the widespread concern of recent decades that severe farm real estate transfer problems wouhd be encountered by farmers has proved very largely to be groundless. Inflation, farm support policies and interest rate subsidies have care of that. Generalisations are hazardous but, on balance, farm and fiscal policies in the United States have favoured the larger corporate organisation more than elsewhere ; in general, policies have tended to be risk reducing and therefore have tended to favour the larger. In the United Kingdom recent wealth taxation will favour the smaller, but a conjunction of taxation advantages and a narrowing of investment outlets have led to a growth of institutional ownership of farmland for renting which seems not to have been experienced by other countries. In the rest of Western Europe such developments have tended to be frustrated by ad hoc measures favouring the smaller family farmer already in possession. Three important questions pose themselves : — First, what is the future likely to hold in terms of the costs and benefits to be expected from the present largely inflation created farm business, scale and ownership complex ? — Second, and in contrast to the above type of question, there is the claim that, the great merit of the smaller family-run — In addition to this question of efficiency of factor use in the shorter-term and the longer-term gains to be expected from an ownership pattern which is more resilient in the face of risk, and, hence, is less prone to exhibit unstable adjustment patterns as margins over factor costs narrowly considered fluctuate with time, there is a broad strategic issue relating to the socio-economic breadth of the land ownership base. The aesthetic appeal of the countryside is a matter of concern to everybody, rural and urban dwellers alike, it is largely determined by the farming systems, narrowly considered, that are practised, but, it reflects also the wealth and the social and aesthetic values of its owners. The British countryside is largely a by-product of a social system which is no longer acceptable in its totality. Nevertheless, it resulted in a landscape which has given, and continues to give, great pleasure. It is a feature of land ownership policy which appears, as yet, to have been given relatively little thought, as attention has focused on short-term and narrowly commercial factors.