Specialist broker for agricultural, forestry and equestrian real estate

No land in sight - Greif & Meyer in an interview with Handelsblatt

While climate change is reducing the value of German forests, prices for agricultural land are rising dramatically - particularly due to financially strong investors who benefit from tax loopholes and subsidies.

Regional farmers are losing out. And politicians are watching.

The air shimmers over the fields, the sun rarely disappears behind a summer cloud. Despite the heat, Phillip Brändle is wearing heavy boots and work trousers as he tinkers with a red tractor. The 35-year-old would love to be his own boss; he has long dreamed of setting up an organic farm. But on the farm near Berlin, where Brändle earns his money, he is only an employee. His dream was supposed to come true this year, until a phone call a few weeks ago brought him back down to earth. "We're not going to sign a purchase agreement," the person on the other end of the line told him. It was a farmer who actually wanted to sell his farm - until then to Brändle. He had been looking for a suitable farm for years, and about a year ago Brändle found what he was looking for not far from his current place of work: 270 hectares of land, a residential building with grass-green roof tiles, the gates to the stables made of oak. "The price put us off at first," says the agronomist. He would have had to pay more than 1.5 million euros for the farm. But then he plucked up all his courage, quit his job and prepared the move to the farm. He says: "The preparations and consultations alone cost us several thousand euros."

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