DANISH AGRICULTURE (2)

Denmark is very good at farming. But in today's world, even the best have problems to deal with. The big difficulty is the price of land, which is the normal security for farmers' debts. In the noughties, those debts soared on the back of ever rising land prices. At their peak in the summer of 2008, they reached around kr.280.000 a hectare; today they are around kr.150.000 a hectare, having fallen 13% since the fourth quarter of last year. Experts say that the market has reached bottom, but they were also saying that in 2010.

Falling asset values mean that farmers either have to put up more security (difficult, if you've borrowed up to your eyeballs) or have their loans called. Danish farmers may be efficient, but they are no match for tightened credit rules.

Walter Blotscher