Land without Value? Unlocking the Zero Lease Puzzle in Swedish Agricultural Transformation
Keywords:
Agricultural land, agricultural restructuring, land tenure, land lease, land value, Sweden
Abstract
This paper investigates the drivers and mechanisms behind the zero lease phenomenon in Sweden, which is characterised by no monetary transfer between landowners and land users, and has been captured in agricultural statistics since the late 1990s. The phenomenon is examined through a theoretical framework which combines rent theory with geographical and historically contextualised views of farming and farmland tenure. We use rent statistics but focus on exploring the geographical dimensions of zero lease farmland in Sweden, mapping spatial variations of rents, the scale of free-leased fields and the geographical location of these fields both at the farm and regional level. Our results show how the zero lease is related to geographical space and ongoing transformation processes in agriculture and rural spaces over time. The paper concludes that the zero lease creates a temporal flexibility for landowners, preserves non-monetary landscape values, and creates opportunities for future farming by preserving landesque capital. This Swedish example illustrates well how, when globally integrated markets force farmers to either restructure, intensify or extensify, and old farming models do not fit the global agri-food systems, farmers find ways to adjust through spatial and temporal means. Seeing the zero lease through farm geographies may suggest opportunities and solutions for making an alternative food and farming future.
References
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Clark, E., & Pissin, A. (2020) Potential rents vs. potential lives. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0308518X20971308.
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Czyżewski, B., & Matuszczak, A. (2016) A new land rent theory for sustainable agriculture. Land Use Policy, 55, 222-229.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10300-x
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Grubbström, A., & Eriksson, C. (2018) Retired farmers and new land users: How relations to land and people influence farmers' land transfer decisions. Sociologia Ruralis, 58(4), 707-725.
Hall, D. (2013) Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession and the global land grab. Third World Quarterly, 34(9), 1582-1604.
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Levers, C., Schneider, M., Prishchepov, A. V., Estel, S., & Kuemmerle, T. (2018) Spatial variation in determinants of agricultural land abandonment in Europe. Science of the Total Environment, 644, 95-111.
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Oliveira, G. D. L., McKay, B. M., & Liu, J. (2021) Beyond land grabs: New insights on land struggles and global agrarian change. Globalizations, 18(3), 321-338.
Ouma, S., Johnson, L., & Bigger, P. (2018) Rethinking the financialization of ‘nature’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(3), 500-511.
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van der Ploeg, J. D. (2018) Differentiation: Old controversies, new insights. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(3), 489-524.
van der Ploeg, J. D., Franco, J. C., & Borras Jr, S. M. (2015) Land concentration and land grabbing in Europe: A preliminary analysis. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 36(2), 147-162.
Purcell, T. F., Loftus, A., & March, H. (2020) Value–rent–finance. Progress in Human Geography, 44(3), 437-456.
Robinson, G. M. (2018) New frontiers in agricultural geography: Transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change. Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (78), 1-48.
SCB [Statistics Sweden] (2022). Consumer Price Index. Accessed on March 22, 2022. https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/prices-and-consumption/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-cpi/
Shannon, F. A. (1977) The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897 (Vol. 5). London: Routlege.
Slätmo, E. (2018) Financialization and the Swedish Land Acquisition Act. In: Slatmo, E. (Ed.) The Financialization of Agri-Food Systems. London: Routledge, 281-298.
Smith, N. (2002) New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy. Antipode, 34(3), 427–450.
Terres, J. M., Scacchiafichi, L. N., Wania, A., Ambar, M., Anguiano, E., Buckwell, A.,... & Zobena, A. (2015) Farmland abandonment in Europe: Identification of drivers and indicators, and development of a composite indicator of risk. Land Use Policy, 49, 20-34.
Vergara-Camus, L., & Kay, C. (2017) Agribusiness, peasants, left‐wing governments, and the state in Latin America: An overview and theoretical reflections. Journal of Agrarian Change, 17(2), 239-257.
Wästfelt, A. (2021) Landscape as filter-farm adaptation to changing contexts. Journal of Land Use Science, 16(2), 142-158.
-----. (2018) Shifts in agriculture praxis: Farm modernisation and global integration. In Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food (pp. 117-126). Routledge.
-----. (2014a) Att bruka men inte äga: arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag [To Use but not to Own: Lease and Other Use Rights to Land in Swedish Agriculture from Medieval Times to Today]. Stockholm: Kungl. skogs- och lantbruksakademien.
-----. (2014b) Nollarrende – om samtida värdering av jordbruksmark och landskap [Zero lease – On contemporary valuation of agricultural land and landscape]. In Wästfelt (ed.) Att bruka men inte äga: arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag [To Use but not to Own: Lease and Other Use Rights to Land in Swedish Agriculture from Medieval Times to Today] (pp. 278-288). Stockholm: Kungl. skogs- och lantbruksakademien.
Wästfelt, A. Eriksson, C. (2017) Det svenska lantbrukets omvandling 1990-2014: Exemplet Uppsala län [The Transformation of Swedish Agriculture 1990-2014: The example of Uppsala County]. Uppsala: SLU.
Wästfelt, A., & Zhang, Q. (2016) Reclaiming localisation for revitalising agriculture: A case study of peri-urban agricultural change in Gothenburg, Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies, 47 (Part A), 172-185. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.07.013.
Wästfelt, A., & Zhang, Q. (2018) Keeping agriculture alive next to the city – The functions of the land tenure regime nearby Gothenburg, Sweden. Land Use Policy, 78, 447-459.
Andueza, L. (2020) Value, (use) values, and the ecologies of capital: On social form, meaning, and the contested production of nature. Progress in Human Geography, 45(5), 1105-1125.
Borras JR, S. M., & Franco, J. C. (2012) Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change: A preliminary analysis. Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1), 34-59.
Le Billon, P., & Sommerville, M. (2017) Landing capital and assembling ‘investable land’ in the extractive and agricultural sectors. Geoforum, 82, 212-224.
Bunkus, R., & Theesfeld, I. (2018) Land grabbing in Europe? Socio-cultural externalities of large-scale land acquisitions in East Germany. Land, 7(3), 98.
Clark, E. (1995) The rent gap re-examined. Urban Studies, 32(9), 1489-1503.
Clark, E., & Pissin, A. (2020) Potential rents vs. potential lives. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0308518X20971308.
Cochet, H. (2018) Capital–labour separation and unequal value-added distribution: Repositioning land grabbing in the general movement of contemporary agricultural transformations. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(7), 1410-1431.
Czyżewski, B., & Matuszczak, A. (2016) A new land rent theory for sustainable agriculture. Land Use Policy, 55, 222-229.
Dull, R. A., Nevle, R. J., Woods, W. I., Bird, D. K., Avnery, S., & Denevan, W. M. (2010) The Columbian encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt land use change, fire, and greenhouse forcing. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(4), 755-771.
FAO & IFAD (2019) United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028. Global Action Plan. Rome. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
Fairchild, E., & Petrzelka, P. (2022) Landownership and power: Reorienting land tenure theory. Agriculture and Human Values, 1-10.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10300-x
Gerber, J. F. (2020) Degrowth and critical agrarian studies. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(2), 235-264.
Grubbström, A., & Eriksson, C. (2018) Retired farmers and new land users: How relations to land and people influence farmers' land transfer decisions. Sociologia Ruralis, 58(4), 707-725.
Hall, D. (2013) Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession and the global land grab. Third World Quarterly, 34(9), 1582-1604.
Harvey, D (2003) The New Imperialism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Hurt, R. D. (2020) The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences. University of Alabama Press.city
Håkansson, N. T., & Widgren, M. (Eds.). (2016) Landesque capital: The Historical Ecology of Enduring Landscape Modifications (Vol. 5). London: Routledge.
Jordbruksverket [Swedish Board of Agriculture] (2001) Utvecklingen av arrende-, mark- och fastighetspriser i jordbruket [Trends in agricultural rents, land prices and real estate prices]. Rapport 2001:8.
Jordbruksverket [Swedish Board of Agriculture] (2008) Arrendepriser på jordbruksmark 2008 [Agricultural Land Rents], Statistika meddelanden JO 39 SM 0901.
Jordbruksverket [Swedish Board of Agriculture] (2010) Arrendepriser på jordbruksmark 2010 [Agricultural Land Rents], Statistika meddelanden JO 39 SM 1101.
Jordbruksverket [Swedish Board of Agriculture] (2014) Arrendepriser på jordbruksmark 2014 [Agricultural Land Rents], Statistika meddelanden JO 39 SM 1501.
Jordbruksverket [Swedish Board of Agriculture] (2018) Arrendepriser på jordbruksmark 2018 [Agricultural Land Rents], Statistika meddelanden JO 39 SM 1901.
aJordbruksverkets statistikdatabas [The Swedish Board of Agriculture’s statistical database]. (2020) Arrendepriser [Rents] 1994-2020. Accessed on March 4, 2022. https://statistik.sjv.se/PXWeb/pxweb/sv/Jordbruksverkets%20statistikdatabas/?rxid=5adf4929-f548-4f27-9bc9-78e127837625
Kallis, G., Kostakis, V., Lange, S., Muraca, B., Paulson, S., & Schmelzer, M. (2018) Research on degrowth. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 43, 291-316.
Kuns, B., Visser, O., & Wästfelt, A. (2016) The stock market and the steppe: The challenges faced by stock-market financed Nordic farming ventures in Russia and Ukraine. Journal of Rural Studies, 45, 199-217.
Lasanta, T., Arnáez, J., Pascual, N., Ruiz-Flaño, P., Errea, M. P., & Lana-Renault, N. (2017) Space–time process and drivers of land abandonment in Europe. Catena, 149, 810-823.
Levers, C., Schneider, M., Prishchepov, A. V., Estel, S., & Kuemmerle, T. (2018) Spatial variation in determinants of agricultural land abandonment in Europe. Science of the Total Environment, 644, 95-111.
Marx, K. (1991) Capital, Volume III. London: Penguin.
Oliveira, G. D. L., McKay, B. M., & Liu, J. (2021) Beyond land grabs: New insights on land struggles and global agrarian change. Globalizations, 18(3), 321-338.
Ouma, S., Johnson, L., & Bigger, P. (2018) Rethinking the financialization of ‘nature’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(3), 500-511.
-----. (2008) The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan.
van der Ploeg, J. D. (2018) Differentiation: Old controversies, new insights. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(3), 489-524.
van der Ploeg, J. D., Franco, J. C., & Borras Jr, S. M. (2015) Land concentration and land grabbing in Europe: A preliminary analysis. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 36(2), 147-162.
Purcell, T. F., Loftus, A., & March, H. (2020) Value–rent–finance. Progress in Human Geography, 44(3), 437-456.
Robinson, G. M. (2018) New frontiers in agricultural geography: Transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change. Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (78), 1-48.
SCB [Statistics Sweden] (2022). Consumer Price Index. Accessed on March 22, 2022. https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/prices-and-consumption/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-cpi/
Shannon, F. A. (1977) The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897 (Vol. 5). London: Routlege.
Slätmo, E. (2018) Financialization and the Swedish Land Acquisition Act. In: Slatmo, E. (Ed.) The Financialization of Agri-Food Systems. London: Routledge, 281-298.
Smith, N. (2002) New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy. Antipode, 34(3), 427–450.
Terres, J. M., Scacchiafichi, L. N., Wania, A., Ambar, M., Anguiano, E., Buckwell, A.,... & Zobena, A. (2015) Farmland abandonment in Europe: Identification of drivers and indicators, and development of a composite indicator of risk. Land Use Policy, 49, 20-34.
Vergara-Camus, L., & Kay, C. (2017) Agribusiness, peasants, left‐wing governments, and the state in Latin America: An overview and theoretical reflections. Journal of Agrarian Change, 17(2), 239-257.
Wästfelt, A. (2021) Landscape as filter-farm adaptation to changing contexts. Journal of Land Use Science, 16(2), 142-158.
-----. (2018) Shifts in agriculture praxis: Farm modernisation and global integration. In Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food (pp. 117-126). Routledge.
-----. (2014a) Att bruka men inte äga: arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag [To Use but not to Own: Lease and Other Use Rights to Land in Swedish Agriculture from Medieval Times to Today]. Stockholm: Kungl. skogs- och lantbruksakademien.
-----. (2014b) Nollarrende – om samtida värdering av jordbruksmark och landskap [Zero lease – On contemporary valuation of agricultural land and landscape]. In Wästfelt (ed.) Att bruka men inte äga: arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag [To Use but not to Own: Lease and Other Use Rights to Land in Swedish Agriculture from Medieval Times to Today] (pp. 278-288). Stockholm: Kungl. skogs- och lantbruksakademien.
Wästfelt, A. Eriksson, C. (2017) Det svenska lantbrukets omvandling 1990-2014: Exemplet Uppsala län [The Transformation of Swedish Agriculture 1990-2014: The example of Uppsala County]. Uppsala: SLU.
Wästfelt, A., & Zhang, Q. (2016) Reclaiming localisation for revitalising agriculture: A case study of peri-urban agricultural change in Gothenburg, Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies, 47 (Part A), 172-185. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.07.013.
Wästfelt, A., & Zhang, Q. (2018) Keeping agriculture alive next to the city – The functions of the land tenure regime nearby Gothenburg, Sweden. Land Use Policy, 78, 447-459.
Published
2022-07-19
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