Virtual farmland

The lease law thus contributes to a very specific phenomenon, coined ‘virtual farmland’ by Anna Verhoeve. Virtual farmland is ‘land within zones allocated for agriculture that is used for non-agricultural land uses’ [Verhoeve, et. al., 2013]. Her research showed that in Flanders, 15% of the statutory agricultural area is in fact not used for agricultural activity [Verhoeve et.al., 2015]. Of this area, 33% is apparent farmland, 36.3% are domestic gardens and 5.5% are non agricultural economic activities. Today, when a farmer quits their agricultural activity and the land becomes available, there is no law keeping the land from becoming recreational land or nature. Next to recreational conversion, the recent law on forest compensation for industrial expansion areas replacing woodland also has increased land speculation on farming land by financially very strong actors. In some Flemish municipalities, more than half of the agricultural land is virtual farmland [Verhoeve et.al., 2015]. 

Everywhere in Flanders, but especially so in the province of Antwerp, there is the phenomenon of verpaarding (horsification). As the generic legislation considers horsekeeping to be an agricultural activity, 5.1 % or 70.000 ha of Flanders is horse pasture, of which 84,8% is statutory agricultural land [Verhoeve et.al., 2016]. When land becomes available, the dominance of the horse industry is of no surprise, since it is economically very successful and even uses the environmental argument of improving carbon uptake in pasture land compared to arable land [VILT, 2019]. 

Often combined with recreational horsekeeping is the shift of use of not only land but also the built patrimonium. The merging of farms at the side of the bigger players or the limited financial capacity to carry out necessary renovation works at the smaller ones, both have the effect that more and more agricultural assets are being sold. The private, generally non-agricultural market is financially stronger, and many typical farmsteads are now being converted into family homes, professional practices or care accommodations. Often these form ‘trojan horses’ in the rural areas, with adjacent plots are no longer used productively. But these rather urban functions also, often and over time, will experience the surrounding (loud and smelly) agriculture as a nuisance, and will strongly advocate for change in those areas. This process increasingly expands, creating cycles of displacement. The policy frameworks that today want to protect open space and agriculture, in theory, perpetuate this paradoxically. The inadequacy of effective enforcement, the lack of consideration in zonal changes, the absence of an assessment framework for agricultural conversion, the strict separation and definition of what farming is and what it is not (full-time farmers can receive certain subsidies, farmers in secondary occupation cannot), not fully counting ancillary income as full income streams, etc., sustains this problem [ILVO et.al., 2018b]. In the province of East-Flanders, 40% of the vacant farmsteads are being turned into residential villas [Verhoeve et.al., 2018].

It remains extremely difficult to get reliable data on the distribution of ownership between public and private owners and within the public sphere. It is estimated that 30% of Belgian farmland is still in public hands [Verpoest, 2019]. This most likely stems from the fact that there has always been a strong link between State and Church property. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Napoleon and Pope Pius XII came to an agreement stipulating that the properties of the Church, both land and other assets, such as abbeys and monasteries, could be again used by the ecclestial communities but were entrusted to the municipalities. That is, the property rights were. The rights of use were handed to the Kerkfabriek (church ‘factory’), of which the responsibilities were solely of a logistic nature [Raspoet, 2003]. Because of the increase of secularization, most explicitly in the last two generations, these rights of use are increasingly handed over to the municipalities. The Public Centre of Social Welfare (PCSW, OCMW in Dutch, CPAS in French), and mainly its historical precedents, were on the receiving end of several donations. In post-war times, these organisations also invested heavily in land, both as a capital investment and with the future prospect to develop these. The PCSW’s in Belgium became huge landowners, also beyond their own traditional field of action. According to unofficial sources, the Brussels Capital Region PCSW possesses 424 hectares of agricultural land in Wallonia and 1.665 hectares in Flanders. 

Two reasons have recently completely disrupted this form of public land ownership. Firstly, since 2017, Flanders has decided to merge each PCSW with its municipality (creating huge mis-matches between land ownership and the municipality’s own jurisdiction, also called ‘property beyond locality’), while Wallonia wants to stimulate collaboration between the two public entities rather than mergers. As such, the exploitation of the properties are no longer required to serve only the social mission of the PCSW. They shift and become a financial asset and, therefore, a huge opportunity of income to implement the municipality’s wider goals. And this is worsened by, secondly, stricter European budget requirements.  Since January 2019, these make it less interesting for local municipalities to take out long-term loans [11]. Municipalities then meet their investment needs through the short-term sale of fixed assets. Given the high demand, land beyond their own juridical borders, stemming usually from the PCSW, comes as a godsend. There are no figures available yet, but practice shows there is a significant increase of land sale visible.

Between 2014 and 2017, Flemish local authorities and PCSWs have already sold more than 32 square kilometers of public land (or the entire surface of the City of Brussels), for more than 1.6 billion euros [Walraven, 2019]. It averagely constitutes 25% of the total income of municipalities. Stated purely economical, because of the relative scarcity of land in Belgium, no healthy business would sell a priceless asset like land. Public authorities in Flanders are doing it massively. Beyond economics, the blow is perhaps hardest for the already pushed-out farming community. As access to land for new and existing farmers is a huge issue, there are protests against the sale of public land as the protestors see the opportunity for the managing of public land in favour of socially inclusive and nature inclusive agricultural purposes. For the moment, it seems that a lot of municipalities are merely using the land in order to fill the budgetary gaps, considering farmland as alienable goods like any other marketable goods and thus contributing to land concentration [Roels, 2017]. When it is not sold, it is rented to the highest bidder, again putting small-scale farmers out of play. When it is sold, on top of the fact that the sale of the land is often not even made public before being sold or sold in one lot, excluding smallholders [Verpoest, 2019] and unknowingly favouring land concentration.

The east-western line dividing northern Flanders from southern Wallonia, or the Dutch-speaking Flemish community from the French-speaking Walloons, also marks a difference in the types of ‘land’. Flanders is dominated by flatlands, partly won by damming the sea, partly kept fertile by intensive manuring. Over the centuries, it proved to be land that was extremely suitable for intensive arable and livestock farming. These are agricultural practices that, as we have illustrated in Chapter 2, focused primarily on the world market and flanked the historically dominant Christian-democratic and liberal views of Flanders (which are nowadays peppered with more Flemish nationalistic and separatistic sentiments). Wallonia, by contrast, is generally much more hilly, exposing a variety of forested land, stony outcrops and intensive to very extensive farming land. Its soil is dominated by rough shades of loam, clay or limestone. More importantly, perhaps, was its deeper underground, rich in coal deposits. It sparked extraction and fueled the industrial revolutions. It gave way, over time, to a strong socialist (and Belgicist/Unionist) course, very much at odds with Flemish politics. It would not even be blunt to state that, when we look at agricultural policies, the two regions have little in common. Encouraged by linguistic and cultural affiliation, the Flemish have the tendency to look at the Dutch as a reference, while the Walloons are often inspired by French best practices. We want to outline some of the most strong differences by looking at the amount of organic farming, how land is perceived or how the societal midfield is organised.

As a first, organic farming. In the past twenty years, organic farms have grown from around 200 to 1.650 in Wallonia, while in Flanders the amount rose from about 120 to 480 farms during the same period. Despite this increase, in total, however, Belgium scores poorly when compared to the European average. Although the organic market is very stable, and the demand for organic production is increasing strongly (not least from the supermarket chains) [RetailDetail, 2019], it is not seen as a worthy alternative. Flemish policy strongly adheres to the free market ideal and plays the various niche agricultural models in a kind of ‘divide and rule’ model. Two years ago, the then Flemish minister of agriculture even described organic farmers as ‘keuterboerkes’ (backward farmers) who would not be able to generate a valid income [Knack, 2017].