In Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, farm buildings appear with an increasing pace on the real estate market as ‘farms for sale’. In most cases, these buildings lost their original function due to scale enlargement of farming production, with fewer farms managing the existing farmland. At the same time, technological changes within the agricultural sector impose new building requirements on existing farms, leaving traditional farm buildings not adapted to new agricultural practices. And finally, changing societal expectations towards the countryside induce restrictions towards farming practices which increasingly also provoke the abandonment of farms (Verhoeve et al., 2016).
On ‘for sale’-websites, these former farms are recommended to possible byers as ideal places to live, to keep hobby animals like horses or to develop new professional activities. These assets turn those farms into interesting investments to a diversity of actors, and are attractive to families looking for a luxury living at the countryside, a B&B entrepreneur, a furniture restaurateur etc. The strong competition for space, which is a typical characteristic of peri-urban areas (Kerselaers et al., 2015; Niewöhner,2016), today give farm buildings a critical position at the interface of different interests. Farms today thus are for sale in a market where the demand side is substantially higher than the supply side, leading to a steady increase of selling prices. This raises the question : Who offers more?
In this contribution, we address this rapidly changing dynamic from an agricultural and landscape perspective. Based on data-integration and data collected during extensive field visits, we will illustrate and explain this reality of farmer building reconversion. Maps and figures show a strong and divers non-agricultural reconversion dynamic in Flanders. Qualitative research also identifies a number of drivers of this reconversion. A central conclusion of our research is that farmers today experience a major pressure from this non-agricultural dynamic, and more specifically face difficulties in accessing land and farm buildings. This pressure has reached such levels that it imposes the urgent and existential question if there will still be farmers in Flanders in the future.
These insights are further embedded in a critical reflection on the reconversion of farms. We introduce a conceptual framework to disentangle different reconversion questions and challenges, and to define policy strategies that guide conversions towards a more sustainable countryside. Therefore we use a combination of an agricultural perspective on re-use value of farms buildings for agriculture and a societal perspective, related to the societal value (heritage, regional identity,…). Addressing abandoned farm buildings within this framework clarifies the different roles of farms and farmers in an urbanizing society. Furthermore we argue that a balanced and coordinated reconversion strategy is necessary to guide the re-use of farms in terms of rural sustainability and collective interest.
Kerselaers, E; Van den Haute, F; Verhoeve, A; Rogge, E., 2015. Analysis of spatial patterns and driving factors of farmland loss. Proceedings from congress “Agriculture in an urbanizing society”, 14/09/15 - 17/09/15, Rome, Italië
Niewöhner, J., Bruns, A., Hostert, P., Krueger, T., Nielsen, J.Ø., Haberl, H., Lauk, C., Lutz, J., Müller, D. (Eds.) Land Use Competition Ecological, Economic and Social Perspectives, Springer, 2016.
Verhoeve, A., Dewaelheyns, V., Kerselaers, E., Rogge, E. , Gulnick, H., 2015. Virtual farmland: grasping the occupation of agricultural land by non-agricultural land uses. Land Use Policy 42, 547-556.
- Log in to post comments