„Bauernland in Bauernhand“: Gutachten im Auftrag des Bayerischen Staatsministeriums für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten

This expert report commissioned by the Free State of Bavaria is based on a catalogue of questions from the Bavarian Parliament on developments and options for action on the agricultural land market in Bavaria. These are answered from an agricultural economic and jurisprudential perspective. An analysis of transaction data from the Bavarian land transaction authorities from 2019 to 2021 shows that only about one third of the sold agricul-tural land larger than 1 ha was purchased by agricultural buyers. Non-agricultural buyer groups, especially mu-nicipalities and companies, pay significantly higher purchase prices on average than farmers. As the evaluation of ownership data from a sample of Bavarian municipalities shows, 95 % of agricultural land is owned by natural persons, half of whom are farmers and non-farmers, respectively. Only about 0.4 % of agricultural land is sold per year, whereas an estimated 3.2 % is transferred or inherited in generational change. From a jurisprudential point of view, the administrative implementation of the Real Property Transactions Act is surveyed by means of a questionnaire to the approval authorities, and a comparison of legal regulations with those of other federal states and Austria is made. The recommendations of the report focus on an improvement of administrative implementation and improved knowledge management in the approval authorities. Possibilities for strengthening the right of first refusal under settlement law are suggested. In addition, options are presented for consistently controlling purchase prices with respect to price abuse by including all non-agricultural buyer groups.