High in the Netherlands: Cafes and Land Prices

By Jarrod Sellar and Tommy Marsh

LSU Ag Leadership Class XVIII

Our trip to the Netherlands and Belgium has been an eye-opening experience, offering us new perspectives on their agricultural practices. The contrast with the practices we’re familiar with in the United States is striking, though Louisiana agriculture seems to share some similarities with the Dutch system. Both regions benefit from rich, fertile soils, largely due to their proximity to water.

While Louisiana is nearly three times the size of the Netherlands, the scale of farming is quite different. Large farms in Louisiana often stretch across thousands of acres, whereas the largest farm we visited in the Netherlands was approximately 900 hectares (about 2,200 acres). This farm operated as a cooperative with neighboring farms. The largest individual farm we saw was around 135 hectares, or roughly 335 acres.

As agricultural lenders, our immediate question was: How much is farmland selling for here? The answer was staggering: land prices range from $180,000 to $200,000+ per hectare, which translates to about $72,000 to $80,000+ per acre. That’s a lot of potatoes, tulips, onions, sugar beets, or livestock needed to cash flow those prices! What we also learned is that farmland in the Netherlands hasn’t changed hands much in the past 30 to 40 years. Available land is mostly government-owned, and when it does sell, it’s often purchased by corporations or the government for development. This trend poses challenges for the Dutch, as their farmland is gradually shrinking, making it harder to produce enough food to sustain the population.

Overall, this trip has been both enlightening and fun, especially for a couple of ag lenders from Louisiana!