Understanding farmers land use behavior under different institutional settings

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus Salhofer
• Subject Area: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317374551

This project explores the role of farm inheritance and succession – important formal and informal institutions of land transfer – for land fragmentation, land ownership fragmentation and absentee landownership. It then investigates the effect of these implications on the economic and environmental performance of farms.In Austria, different customs of inheritance and succession of farms exist. In most regions, impartible inheritance ("Anerbenrecht") has been the common practice, while some regions in Burgenland, Lower Austria and eastern Styria have traditionally practiced partible inheritance ("Realteilung").We utilize two large-scale geospatial datasets: 1) the Integrated Accounting and Control System (IACS), which includes land use information at the plot-level such as crop choice and participation in agri-environmental schemes; and 2) Austrian cadaster data, containing information on legal property items and their owners, including owners’ place of residence. Moreover, we combine farm-level data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) with plot-level data and conduct qualitative interviews with farmers and landowners.a.) Inheritance, land fragmentation, land ownership fragmentation, absentee landownersUtilizing the IACS data, cadaster data and spatial analysis we identify 1) the extent and spatial distribution of land fragmentation; 2) the extent and spatial distribution of land ownership fragmentation; 3) gain insights into the prevalence of absentee landownership. We derive measures of these aspects at farm level and regional level and relate them to different customs of inheritance and succession.b.) Economic and environmental efficiency under land(ownership) fragmentationAgricultural land fragmentation can have different private and public costs and benefits including higher transportation costs, higher labor requirements, reduced production risk and increased crop diversity. Moreover, land fragmentation often goes hand in hand with land ownership fragmentation. This may imply higher transaction costs for renting farmers. Combining data from IACS, cadaster and FADN, and using frontier analysis (DEA, SFA), we investigate 1) the effect of land fragmentation and land ownership fragmentation on the efficiency of farms; and 2) if economic efficiency and environmental efficiency (e.g., crop diversity), are substitutes or complements.c.) The property relationship and farmers’ conservation behavior There is evidence that the relationship between landlord and tenant impacts farmers’ land use behavior. We investigate: 1) the relationship between landlords and tenants, placing a particular focus on proximity/distance; and 2) the effect of proximate vs. distant landlord-tenant relationships (e.g., residential vs. absentee landlords) on farmers’ soil conservation behavior. Applying mixed methods, our results are then based on qualitative interviews and regression analysis applied to plot-level data.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2569: Agricultural Land Markets - Efficiency and Regulation
• International Connection: Austria
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)