Landscapes Podcast [11] The Visible Hand - Roz Corbett

A visit to France to learn about a unique policy for democratizing farmland sales

Sep 08, 2023

Episode Description

Normally, land owners get a powerful say in the direction of land use. But what if we could design policies such that public values of land use directed who gets to own the land?

PhD student and farmer Roz Corbett travels to France to find out.

Episode Links

Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam’s newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com.

This podcast was a team effort of Tanguy Martin from Terre de Liens, Amelia Veitch from the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique (LAP-EHESS) and the University of Lausanne, Hélène Bechet and Alice Martin-Prevel from Terre de Liens, and Claire Lamine from INRAE for her involvement and support through the ATTER project. Georgie Styles provided production and audio mastering support.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

If you like the podcast please leave it a review in your podcast app.

Introduction

Last month, news broke that a mysterious group of investors had successfully managed to purchase over 50000 acres of agricultural land in Solano county, just northeast of San Francisco. Perhaps pressured by the newspaper speculations, the owners, calling themselves Flannery Associates, came forward about their future plans to turn the farmland into a new utopian city. The project, called California Forever, it turned out, is driven by an ownership group consisting of silicon valley billionaires with designs of circumventing the normal routes of urban reform through the raw power of land ownership.

The website of their endeavor features almost comically bucolic renderings of American suburban life and ecomodernist snapshots of smart mobility solutions. It also stinks of an age old settler-colonialist hunger for terra nullius.

The story provoked strong reactions with many wondering what could be done to slow or stop the plans of these newly emboldened owners. There are routes of democratic oversight of how land ought to be used. The county can resist approval of needed permits, for example, or perhaps existing zoning law prevents the enlightened planners of Flannery Associates from full control over land use.

But the reality is, I expect Flannery to mostly get what they want. They own the land. Even if they force strong democratic resistance to their vision, the power of ownership grants them an incredibly strong piece of leverage that will no doubt smooth over future negotiations in their favor.

The time to intervene in their grand plans was before the land was purchased. And, that period of negotiation was cunningly managed in secret.

That’s why, one of the most compelling policy responses to the unequal power granted through land ownership are procedures that intervene at the point of sale. These types of policies say that before the land sale can be approved, it must meet a number of democratically decided principles. Such forms of “public interest test” are indeed on the menu for common sense land reforms in many countries.

One of the greatest worked examples of this type of policy SAFER in France. A process where a committee of representative individuals connected to the land in question must approve farmland sales.

How does this process work in practice? Does it succeed in moderating speculation of agricultural land? Can SAFER be an example for countries seeking to remedy past or prevent future cases like California Forever?

In this episode of Landscapes, you’ll hear from Roz Corbett, a new entrant farmer and PhD candidate studying the emerging land reform agenda in Scotland and its relation to food systems transformation. This summer she travelled to France to see for herself how SAFER worked and if it held promise to direct forthcoming iterations of Scotland’s land policy, or any other context where there might be a desire to check the raw power of ownership to influence how our land is used.

Interview Transcript

Roz:

Hello, my name's Roz Corbett. I'm a grower, a researcher, and an organizer in the agroecology and food sovereignty movement. I live in mid-Wales, though spend a lot of my time in Scotland. And my research focuses on Scotland.

I've been a grower for nearly 10 years now. And I've had various challenges with getting access to land for growing. I understand that these challenges are systemic. Many other people experience similar challenges, and for many people it's even harder to access land than it is for me. And yet I know many people who, despite all these challenges, have the same strong desire to do land-based work. Work that's meaningfully connected to land, and the people and ecology in that place.

I'm currently doing a PhD, looking at community landownership in Scotland. And how this part of the land reform agenda in Scotland might support more people to access land in meaningful ways. And in the PhD research, I question how we think about new entrant land access and what the wider dynamics are that impact on land access for new entrants and community organizations alike.

In Scotland we often talk about the scale and concentration of land ownership as the root of a lot of problems. This land ownership structure has been shown to have negative effects on rural communities. And it's understood as a concentration of power in the hands of those landowners. The land reform agenda in Scotland has been trying to address this land ownership structure in several different ways.

Over the winter of 2022 and 2023. A new land reform bill was opened up for public consultation and proposed a public interest test to be introduced on the sale of land over 3000 hectares, in recognition that owning such large parcels of land has an impact on the public interest.

While, there's a lot of support for this proposal, there are also a lot of questions about how this public interest test should and could work. Many have criticized the 3000 hectare trigger as being too big, to have any kind of significant impact as it would apply to relatively few land sales. More recently, another bill has been launched to propose that the 3000 hectares is reduced to 500 hectares.

These proposals for a kind of intervention in the land market in Scotland are really significant. The land market is highly unregulated. And undoubtedly, this lack of regulation has facilitated the land ownership structure that currently exists. Regulating the land market could have a significant impact in terms of who gets to own land. And also in terms of who gets to decide, who should own land.

But is size the right mechanism for triggering a public interest test. In the last couple of years we've seen huge inflation in the land market in Scotland driven by a range of factors, including urban flight and carbon credits. Many people are outpriced by increasingly speculative behaviour in the land market. This kind of speculative behaviour can occur on any land sale. Even those that are less than one hectare. As Tim Lang says in his book Feeding Britain. Yes, scale of land ownership and concentration of land ownership are problems. But is the biggest problem actually land value and how the land market operates to increase that value?

As I said before, Scotland land market is highly unregulated. And there are many other countries in Europe that regulate their land market in different ways, including having rules about who can buy land and limits on how much land any individual can own.

In July 2023, I spent a month in France researching mechanisms for regulating the agricultural land market there. Especially focusing on something called the SAFER. Which is a mechanism that can intervene in sales of agricultural land. I was interested to see what we could learn from the SAFER and how it operates. And, what implications this might have in terms of the potential development of a public interest test in Scotland.

First, I spoke to Tanguy Martin from Terre de Liens. Terre de Liens is an organization which supports new entrant land access for agroecological farming by purchasing land using public share offers. It now owns 330 farms across France. I first came across Terre de Liens in 2015 at a land access conference and have been inspired by their work and have had many conversations with Tanguy in the past about how Terre de Liens works. Before working for Terre de Liens, Tanguy used to work for the SAFER. So, he has a good understanding of its background and role in how the agricultural land market operates. First tangy explains the agricultural land market in France and how it's regulated.

Tanguy:

So, mainly there are three markets where you can get land in France. Those three markets are regulated. Not the same way, but they're regulated.

The first one is the tenancy market. Tenancy in France is really controlled because the, the tenant have lots of rights. The price of the rent is fixed by law. The tenancy duration is nine years, but the landowner can't get his land back unless he wants to be a farmer himself. So when, when you get the lease, you are sure that you will have the land for a long time. That's the first point to understand why it's a really important market. The regulation is about a public authorization. So, the state says if you have the right to rent that land or not and the state have a document that says, who should get the land. So that, the first market and how it is regulated.

The second market is the market where you sell and buy land. And it's regulated by the SAFER, and by the pre-emption right of the SAFER.

And, the third market, which is a new one that raised between 2000 and 2010 - and that is now a, a real big market - is the market of shares of company that already owns or rent land.

Roz:

Okay. So that's the different agricultural land markets in France. The tenancy market, the land market for direct ownership. And then the market in shares in companies that own land. All regulated in slightly different ways.

The regulation of the tenancy market is significant in France and deserves more attention. However, I'm going to focus on the SAFER because of how it compares to the current proposals for a public interest test on land sales in Scotland. So let's dig a bit deeper into how the SAFER works.

Next I speak to Amelia Veitch who's a researcher and is looking at the suffer. She attends Sofar committee meetings as part of her research. So she has a good understanding of the day-to-day workings of the suffer.

I spoke to Amelia over the phone while I was staying on a farm in France. And while it was the sixth wettest July on record in the UK, it was the 15th hottest in France since 1900. Which presented some technical difficulties.

Amelia:

Yeah, it's working I think.

Roz:

Okay, great. I just had to turn some things off of my phone and um, it doesn't work very well when it's really hot I'm having to like wrap my phone in a, ice cube to keep it from getting too, too hot.

The, uh, ice cube didn't last for very long. So we resorted to Amelia's recording devices…

Great. From your perspective, can you explain like what the is for

Amelia:

yeah, so the SAFER, it was created in 1960 in France to regulate access to land.

So the SAFER can intervene on any land sale basically. And it's, it's function being the regulation of market prices. So the idea is that every time there's a sale of agricultural land, the solicitors who, who make the sale they have to notify the SAFER and the SAFER has to decide if it's going to intervene or not.

In most cases the SAFER never intervenes. But it can intervene. So there are many cases where for example, in Brittany, where the region is a breeding region, so if you have a wine farmer who wants to buy land and at the same prices that he's used to in his region then the SAFER can intervene and say, no, listen, the prices over here are 5,000 euros a hectare. So you can't… a land can't be bought for 10,000. So we, we decide to pre-empt the sale and basically they tell the owner, this is the price that we are going to buy it from you and you can only sell it to us.

So, at this point, the seller has two options, is basically to continue the sale or withdraw. But if he withdraws he won't be able to sell it to anybody else at any other price.

Roz

And then if the SAFER intervenes as I understand it, there's a process for then deciding who to sell the land to. This is the responsibility of a technical committee, which exists for each region. And they review applications from people who'd like to buy the land. How does this committee work?

Amelia:

So you get state representatives, um, the Chamber of Agriculture, the main farmers unions, the regional, public authorities the regional council, um, solicitors also. So a list of different people and all these people decide who the land will be given to, according to a document known in France as the Chemin de Structures, which is the translation for that is the structure chart, which is a document setting out the agricultural guidelines for each region and suggests an order of priorities for agricultural land.

So basically, for example, this document in Brittany has a list of about ten priorities, which will help the committees decide who the land is going to go to. So, for example, priority number one is priority will be given to local takeovers. So, for example, if a plot next to your farm is free you will have the priority over someone who wants to set up for the first time, for example. So some documents give systematic priority to organic farmers or, or new installations... it's a question of history and politics and how the region feels about its agriculture, the place of the, uh, agricultural economy in each region, basically.

Roz

So to summarize the SAFER can intervene in the land market to regulate prices. And if it does intervene, a technical committee will then take applications from other potential buyers of the land. And decide who should get the land depending on a range of local priorities. Which often includes installing new entrants. That's the theory. So does it work in practice? Let's come back to Tanguy to hear about his views on this.

Tanguy

The stakeholders are more or less the one that, that was there in the, in the sixties and the time they are changing. Because in the sixties, farmers represented almost 30% of the French active population. Nowadays it's 1.9%. So the, the representation of interest around the table is not the same, uh, it can't be the same. And there are other concerns that have raised and we, we should take that in consideration.

What we would need to have a democratic SAFER and democratic regulation of access to land would be to change who's around the table a bit. We would have to think, who are the right stakeholders nowadays. Are the, the bankers the, the good people to decide who should have the land? They already decide who they give the money to so we don't have to give them that power. But we should think about, uh, do we have consumers, do we have inhabitants of the territories?

The way the decision are made, uh, is also problematic because it's done in closed reunions. The process of decision in SAFER should be more open so people would know what's happening and you would also have accountability for the decision. The committees, uh, you can't attend to a committee. In France, you can attend to a township council. You, you, you can see what's happening. You can go to the Parliament and see how it's going on. Uh, it's even broadcast on tv, but you, you can't go to a SAFER committee.

If we do that, we might have something really more democratic. And it's not, it's not that far, it's not that impossible. Uh, but that would really mean to challenge the power of that big farmer's union. That's the tricky point because they, they won't give back that power that easily. It's on the paper, it's really easy. Uh, it doesn't need to have a, a big technical law. Two or three articles, you, you could do that law. But, uh, it's, uh, it's a political fight. It's, uh, that, that would be the point to make.

Roz

Let's go back to Amelia. She's going to explain some of the impacts of the lack of transparency in the SAFER from her perspective.

Amelia

One of the other big critics against, uh, the SAFER in France. There's um, very little transparency, so we don't really know what goes on in these committees. Who takes the decisions? Who votes? In French we say it's an entre soir. An internal world basically, which has trouble opening up to the public. The discussions are confidential which is sometimes problematic because you will get committees that decides that basically the land will go to this person and not this person.

So in some situations, if you look at the two candidates who apply to farm a plot of land, and if you look at the guidelines of the region, then you'll say, oh, well this plot will surely go to this farmer because that's what the region recommends but, but sometimes you get another answer. The committee doesn't decide according to these guidelines for different reasons. They can be quite legitimate because of local conflicts, for example, that some, you know, you get kind of difficult situations locally sometimes. But, it's also sometimes due to the power relations that are inside these committees. And if, for example, one candidate is a part of the Farmer's Union he will get access to the land more easily because he'll get more votes in the committee.

The technical committees should find ways of being more open of argumenting their decisions for why this person is getting land and this isn't, which would really force the committee to be accountable.

Roz

So, I'm interested in coming back to the third type of land market that Tanguy mentioned at the beginning in regulating shareholdings in land. Because this seems to be another way in which the land market can lack transparency. Tanguy explains more about that market in shareholdings in land and how that's impacting on the functioning of the SAFER at the moment.

Tanguy

Today the SAFER is in danger because it's bypassed by the market of share companies and so the people that want to speculate on land and all the financial actors, that want to speculate on land, they go through that shares market. So those companies when they transmit that land, they, they don't sell the land through the market regulated by the SAFER. They will sell their shares, so not selling the land, but selling the share, but buying the shares. If you buy, uh, more than 40% or 50% of, of the share of the company, you take control of the company. And if take control of the company, you also take control of the land.

And, in 2021 it represented I think 200,000 Hectares per year. Almost half of the classic land market. And the, some statistic we could have saying that the land through that share market is sold at higher prices. So that, the way of financialization of land markets. And it's also a way of speculation.

That market is now regulated by a law that has been really implemented at the beginning of 2023. So, if you sell, uh enough shares to someone that will take control of the land, you should get a public authorization. So that, that's really interesting.

There are many problems that lead us to think that it won't be really efficient. Because there is a, a threshold of, land surface, and, and the threshold is pretty high. So big land grabbing, that that will be addressed. And that's a good point. But land concentration in France operates four hectares by four hectares. And, and that land concentration that is a real problem too, won't be addressed.

And, the last thing is that the state ask the SAFER advice on should they give the authorization for the selling of share or not. But the selling shares through the SAFER is exempted of that control. So, it's gonna create a way to get around the regulation through the SAFER which is a bit contradictory. But, as we said before, SAFER are in tension right now between different ways of thinking agriculture and it could result that the land concentration could be improved through the SAFER.

Roz

That's an interesting point about land concentration operating, even at a small scale. It'd be good to come back to that under the time. Mainly what I take from what Tanguy has said is that the SAFER is potentially being co-opted by industrial agriculture and corporate interests. That's a real concern. How do you think that's come about over time?

Tanguy

So, they don't play exactly the role they, they supposed to, and they, they don't find the speculation as they could, as they should. And, that's a real problem. Why, and that's a good question. I, I don't think I have all the answers, but, uh, one of the main reasons, uh, are that the SAFER since, 2010 don't have any more public subsidies and they, they function only on the commercial margin.

So, they, they take a percentage of the price they keep in their pocket. The SAFER is a nonprofit company, so they, they don't pay the shareholders, uh, but they have to pay their, the people that work for the SAFER, they have to pay the buildings et cetera, et cetera. And it's a big machine, so it needs a bit of money to function. So, the interest is that the price are not too low, so the percentage they're gonna get will give them a bit more money. That, that's one of the explanation.

But what we observed too, on many territories is that the SAFER is not that keen on, uh, regulating prices. And the, the SAFER one, one of the roles of SAFER is to intervene on the, on the land market to buy and to sell, they, they give the tone about the prices, and that, that's one of the way they operate. And what we observe is that, uh, when, when they intervene even, uh, not in preemption, but just buying and selling, then they tend to settle the prices, uh, a bit higher over the market.

That's explained because the, the sellers, they want to sell higher. Uh, and, and so, uh, just the SAFER don't negotiate as much as they could. They settle the price a little high and sometimes, saying “it's not that bad, you know, the price of land is not that high in France, so it's not a problem if we put over the, the market price”. And so, they don't see the point to negotiate because they say the farm farmers, the, the good farmers can't afford that land at that price. So what's the point to negotiate? And if we negotiate the, the, the land price are gonna be low. And so , we're gonna have more candidates, that will be more work. And those people, uh, are, uh, Real good farmers. So why, why will we bother to negotiate price?

Roz

So, there's problems with the SAFER linked to how it's funded and how this impacts it's functioning in the land market.

However, on a more positive note, in some instances, this withdrawal of government funding has resulted in forming partnerships with local authorities to provide services for the local authorities to support policies for agricultural transition.

Here, Hélène Bechet from Terre de Lien speaks about her work in these partnerships in different places across France. I met Hélène in the Drôme region of the south of France where Terre de Liens has done a lot of work. It was extremely hot, so we met outside by the river where it was cooler, and sorry for the background noise. And thanks also to Alice Martin-Prevel also from Terre de Liens for translating for us.

Hélène

Yeah, the, SAFER in recent years has received less funding from the state. It used to be more of a state service and more like, didn't have to, they didn't have to worry about their financing sources. And now that their funding is being reduced, they need to do this sort of service providing work. And they specialized, in particular, in working with local authorities. And they often have internalized like a dedicated service for local authorities, um, where they will respond to public market offers. It can be, uh, that a local authorities has, um, has a interventionist policy on land and wants to be able to, to buy some land. So they want to be notified through the SAFER of the land sales that are happening around them.

So as an example of these complementarities between SAFER and Terre de Liens, in the work with local authorities, uh, one example would be, uh, for instance, Hélène worked with a local authority that wanted a diagnosis of unused land, abandoned land around, the city. And, um, they wanted Terre de liens to work, to facilitate a dialogue with the private landowners of these abandoned lands so that they could be, uh, gathered into viable units to be rented to new entrants and farmers who wanted to farm them.

Roz

So in some instances the SAFER is subject to co-optation by corporate agriculture. And on the other hand, it's working in partnership with public bodies to promote organic agriculture and new entrant land access. These are really interesting and sticky tensions for the body. What's the future of the SAFER given these tensions that it currently experiences. And is it, is it worth keeping?

Amelia

The idea is really great. I mean, it's, it's a great tool and, um, um, it has, for example, here in Brittany, it's, it's where, where it's used a lot, um, it has permitted, um, a certain kind of sized farms to, to stay afloat. And it's also one of the regions in France where there's the most newcomers. If, if we consider that land is a public good, and, and that civil society should be more implicated in its use, than it has to be given the, the autonomy to act basically.

Tanguy

Although, I can point many problems with the SAFER. We don't want to destroy them. We don't want them out. We, we want, we want SAFERS, we want better SAFERS. We want to keep them, that's a real important point. What we can observe is that, uh, when the local authorities and local bodies, uh, are keen to implement land policies we can sometimes have really, really great work with the SAFER.

Hélène

Yes. So, I am speaking in my name, but I think maybe also in Terre de Liens name. The SAFER is a fabulous tool, uh, that we, we are really lucky to have in France and would, that would actually allow to regulate this market in the name of common good. Um, so the, the, the tool is there, it exists, um, and it could be a very, important ally of the state and the local authorities in implementing this public policy. And we should really incentivize a lot more transparency, a much more open governance of the SAFER today. There's stakes, um, uh, more generally for society to, to take into account that agricultural land is a common good and so that we should get it out of the speculation and the markets, uh, dynamics that it's in. And that's a societal stake really, and it does go against this logic of land as a capital. Uh, but that's why we need strong public policy today on this issue to value agricultural land. Um, just the same that you know, we should for water and other common goods.

Roz

At the end of July, I came back to mid Wales, happy to be somewhere cooler and wetter.

It was a July of weather extremes. And another example of how quickly our climate is changing. Our agricultural system is one of the drivers of the climate crisis. But also holds many possible solutions for mitigation and adaptation and climate justice. But for those solutions to be possible our relationship with land must change. Treating land as the basis for agricultural commodity production and as a commodity and itself must shift.

There's a diversity of ways to approach this shift in how we understand the land, and how we might understand what the public interest in land is. While land markets continue to facilitate a financialization of land, one effective way of shifting our understanding of land, and how we treat the land, is to change how this market operates, maybe through regulating the land market.

What surprised me in the conversations that I had with people in France about the SAFER is the way that the state was often seen as neutral. And this is despite in recent times in FRANCE when peaceful demonstrations against the transformation of agricultural lands for large scale water storage systems for industrial agriculture - these mega basin projects - have resulted in several people being hospitalized following brutal force from the police. In that instance, the state seems to be acting to protect industrialized agriculture against public challenge of the legitimacy of that that type of agriculture.

The SAFER is one place where public interest in land is defined. And it's an important one. But how much does the credibility and legitimacy of its function hold while other fora for contesting public interest in land are violently repressed by the state?

However, what impressed me about the interviewees is their commitment to engage with the SAFER as one place where processes of land financialization are challenged. But if this can be achieved effectively, building the democratic functions of the SAFER seems important. This would include safeguarding the public funding of the SAFER. Increasing transparency in decision-making processes. Increasing transparency in different elements of the land market, especially the company shareholdings. And including a wider range of voices in the decision-making around this affair.

These are interesting findings and things to bring back to Scotland.