Politics matter. Trade negotiations and agreements can fundamentally alter farmers’ wellbeing and living standards, as well as their net worth.

Over the last 25 years, one of the clearest trends has been the increase in agricultural land prices in parts of the world with access to increasingly open food markets.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the explosion in costs in eastern Europe, where the countries that joined the EU at the start of 2004, have seen farm land prices multiply by 18 times.

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South American farmland has not been far behind, while west European land prices have been the worst performing of all the major areas in the world.

But western Europe is a much more fragmented area in relation to the rules governing land purchase than most other places.

Countries such as Spain, Germany and Ireland have essentially no restrictions on who can buy farmland in their country, while Denmark and especially France have tight restrictions on who can buy farmland in their territory.

In eastern Europe, open access for farmland purchase is simply not an option, while further afield, Brazil and New Zealand now have some of the tightest restrictions on who can buy farmland in the world and even the US, Canada and Australia have tightened up.

In a fascinating survey, international real estate firm Savills unveiled their results at last week’s annual Oxford Farming Conference.

However, the assembled British farmers had more than land prices on their mind.

Last spring, the main replacement for the EU single farm payment was abolished and inheritance taxes on farmland – while damaging new free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand – had been negotiated.

The new UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Emma Reynolds was there to pour oil on troubled waters.

They had already, just the week before, made a significant concession on the inheritance tax issue and Reynolds promised to have an announcement on a new direct payment system in June to be followed by a second announcement in September. She promised there would be no more sudden closures and that the next system would be fairer – the present one gave 25% of the money to just 4% of farmers.

Joint initiative

The Northern Ireland Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Andrew Muir joined in a later ministerial discussion.

He referred to a new joint, cross-border initiative between Dublin and Belfast to control bovine TB, and wished for an easier trade in food and farm products as part of the new UK/EU phytosanitary policy discussions planned for later in the year.

There were no concrete policy announcements.

English beef and dairy farmers had a good 2025, but a poor tillage year, with a combination of drought-induced low yields and poor prices, coupled with the almost total removal of direct payments.

They were promised a new 25-year policy roadmap for the sector by the secretary of state, but given the gyrations in policy over the last few years, a 25-year commitment strained credulity.

Most, I suspect, would have settled for sensible pointers on what the next three to five years might bring.