Belgium/The commune of Marche raises a million euros to help young farmers gain access to land

For young farmers, access to land is increasingly a utopian dream. Large industrial groups are defying the competition with their greater resources, and taking advantage of the situation to speculate on land. In response, the commune of Marche-en-Famenne announced on Thursday that it had released a fund of one million euros to help young farmers stay on and set up in business.

This is one of the demands made by young farmers: access to land at decent prices. With this in mind, the commune of Marche-en-Famenne wishes to acquire land, which it will then rent to young farmers at the average price via an ASBL. The ASBL will bring together Marche's political groups with representatives of agricultural unions, including the FWA (Fédération wallonne de l'Agriculture).

"The first possible lever is to acquire new land, which will be made available to farmers via emphyteutic leases or the classic farm lease," explains Valérie Lescrenier, alderman for Agriculture. "And then, another lever, for farmers who lease land that would be sold, there's this right of pre-emption that the town could recover through the ASBL, buy the land and make it available to the farmer who used to farm it".

What are the criteria?

The commune of Marche-en-Famenne explains that the land, which will be the property of the town, will be rented out to farmers under 40 years of age, who have a holding of less than 56 hectares in the area, and who work as their main occupation.

In this context, the commune is continuing the work it began a few years ago. "In 2018 and 2019, we acquired over 50 hectares of agricultural land," explains Nicolas Grégoire, first alderman. "We established a procedure to be able to prioritize the allocation of this land to local and young farmers, who wanted to be able to set up on a long-term basis. Our intention is therefore to accentuate what has been done to date. We have already allocated 46 hectares to around twenty farmers".

Source: www.rtbf.be/