Socioeconomic drivers of land mobility in Irish agriculture ...

Land mobility is becoming an increasingly important issue for European agriculture given the so-called ‘‘greying’’ of the farming population. This is especially the case in Ireland where meeting current and future policy goals will pose challenges to current agricultural land use and land structures. One of the most important of these policy goals is Food Harvest 2020 (FH2020), which envisages an increase in dairy milk volume of 50% by the year 2020. In order to facilitate this expansion, changes in Irish agricultural land use and land structures may be required. Increased land mobility may be required to reach the FH2020 target. Currently, Ireland has the lowest rate of agricultural land rental in Europe and less than 1% of farmland is transferred by sale or inheritance annually. Although efforts have been made by policy makers to improve rates of land mobility, little improvement has occurred. Given the current land structures, our analysis concludes that dairy farmers will require more land than is ...