Farmland prices in Europe: why a hectare is worth 15 times more in the Netherlands than in France

With the price of a single hectare of arable land in Flevoland, you can buy nearly twenty-two hectares of cropland in Normandy. The comparison is not a figure of speech : it comes straight from the figures published by Eurostat in January 2026. A hectare of arable land is worth €96,608 in the Netherlands and €6,400 in France. A ratio of 1 to 15, between two neighbouring countries, members of the same single market, subject to the same common agricultural policy and endowed with some of the best soils in Europe.

This gap is neither a statistical anomaly nor an accident of the economic cycle. It is stable over time, it is widening, and it results from opposite economic and political choices made on either side of the border. Compared with the rest of the continent, farmland prices in Europe in fact reveal two opposing land models. Here we detail the six mechanisms that explain the Franco-Dutch gap : the value produced per hectare, the scarcity of land, production rights, the regulation of the land market, tenancy status and taxation. And we draw from them the question that really matters to a French owner or investor : is our land « cheap », or simply valued according to different rules ?

Farmland prices in Europe : a 1-to-15 gap that keeps widening

Every year, Eurostat publishes the average price of arable land and permanent grassland in the Member States (dataset apri_lprc). The 2024 data, released on 28 January 2026, give the following ranking for the main Western European markets.

Average price of one hectare of arable land in 2024, in current euros — Source : Eurostat, apri_lprc. * Provisional or estimated figure. ** Flanders only, first half of 2024, Notarisbarometer (Fednot), outside Eurostat. *** France : national average for unlet land and meadows reported by the FNSAFER, with a different scope from that of the other countries. Malta (€201,263/ha) is not included here : its micro-market, entirely driven by urban pressure, compares with no other.

Two observations stand out. First, France is not merely a long way from the Netherlands : it is below the European average, at less than half the Union's average price and half the price of Spain. Second, the gap with the Netherlands is not closing, it is opening up.

Change in arable land prices, in current euros — Source : Eurostat, apri_lprc. Calculations by ma-propriete.fr.

In thirteen years, the price of a Dutch hectare has almost doubled, while the French price rose by 19% in current euros. Adjusted for inflation, French land has in fact lost value over the period, while Dutch land gained around 50% in real terms. And the trend continues : the Kadaster (the Dutch land registry) reports a 12% rise in 2025, to €95,400/ha for all agricultural land combined, while the FNSAFER records €6,460/ha for unlet land and meadows, up 0.9%. In the first quarter of 2026, Dutch arable land passed €115,000/ha, and reached as much as €206,500/ha in Flevoland according to Rabobank.

Where do these figures come from, and are they comparable ?

The question deserves to be asked before going any further, because a 1-to-15 gap naturally invites suspicion of a statistical artefact.

Eurostat does not measure prices itself : it compiles national statistics, each with the scope specific to its country. The French figure corresponds to the national average for « unlet land and meadows » published by the FNSAFER, which Eurostat flags with a « definition differs » indicator. It therefore blends cropland and grassland, whereas the Dutch figure covers arable land only. Three major countries are moreover absent from the dataset : Germany, Italy (which has stopped reporting since 2020) and Cyprus, which rules out any direct comparison with them.

These caveats justify testing the robustness of the gap by changing the breakdown. The exercise is reassuring, so to speak :

• Dutch permanent grassland (€77,609/ha) versus French land and meadows (€6,400/ha) : ratio of 12.1.
• Dutch arable land in early 2026 (€115,000/ha) versus unlet arable-crop land in France (€8,150/ha) : ratio of 14.1.
• All agricultural land in 2025, Kadaster versus FNSAFER (€95,400 versus €6,460/ha) : ratio of 14.8.

Whichever angle is chosen, the order of magnitude holds : between 12 and 15.

Cross-checking with our own data: the DVF observatory

The Eurostat figures for France come from a single source, the FNSAFER, whose scope (unlet, unbuilt land and meadows) is narrower than that of our neighbours. To verify the gap independently, we used a second source of an entirely different nature: the DVF (Demandes de valeurs foncières) database of the DGFiP, which records the prices actually entered in notarial deeds. It is the raw material of our observatory of farmland prices in France.

The difference in method deserves to be spelled out. The FNSAFER produces a market statistic, built from the sale notifications it receives and reprocessed by segment (unlet land, let land, arable crops, vineyards). The DVF database is a fiscal and exhaustive statistic: it records all transfers for consideration, without any qualitative filtering. The two should therefore not give exactly the same figure. Yet they converge remarkably.

Farmland transactions in mainland France — Source : DVF database (DGFiP), analysis by ma-propriete.fr. Average lot size : 10.8 ha.

Across nearly 73,000 transactions analysed between 2021 and 2025, the average price stands at €6,059/ha in 2025, within 6% of the FNSAFER figure for unlet land (€6,460/ha). Two independent sources, two different methods, the same order of magnitude: the French price level is not a data-collection artefact.

The median price, which the FNSAFER statistic does not publish, adds a useful piece of information. It stands at €5,307/ha, 14% below the average. In other words, half of the agricultural hectares sold in France change hands for under €5,300. The average is pulled upwards by a core of premium transactions (peri-urban areas, Champagne, Beauce) that is not representative of the everyday market. Against the Netherlands, the ratio therefore does not fall: it rises to 1 to 18.

Above all, DVF allows a test that national averages rule out: comparing the most expensive segments of the French market with the Dutch average.

Segments of the French market set against the average price of Dutch arable land (€96,608/ha, Eurostat 2024) — Sources : DVF database (DGFiP) and FNSAFER for France (2025), Eurostat for the Netherlands. Calculations by ma-propriete.fr. The reference years differ by one year, which does not alter the orders of magnitude.

The reading is unequivocal. The top decile of the French market, that is the 10% most expensive transactions in the country, remains nine times below the AVERAGE Dutch price. The most expensive département in France, the Bouches-du-Rhône with its market-garden land under urban pressure, remains five times below, and ten times below Flevoland. The gap is therefore not a composition effect caused by the presence, in the French average, of vast areas of low-priced livestock land. It runs through the whole market, from the most modest to the most sought-after.

Finally, the DVF database confirms the stagnation observed in the Eurostat series. Between 2021 and 2025, the average price rose by a cumulative 4.4%, a pace of +1.1% per year, well below inflation over the period. In constant euros, French farmland has depreciated over five years. In 2025 alone, it gained 0.3% while Dutch land gained 12%. The 1-to-15 gap is not a frozen legacy : it widens every year.

The issue, then, is not statistics but economics. Here are the six mechanisms that produce this gap.

Reason no. 1 : a Dutch hectare produces seven times more value

The price of farmland is, as a first approximation, the capitalisation of the income it makes it possible to generate. And the two agricultures are not playing in the same league when it comes to value produced per square metre.

Dividing the output of the agricultural industry by the utilised agricultural area gives a telling order of magnitude : around €23,000 of output per hectare per year in the Netherlands (€41.3 billion for 1.80 million hectares) versus around €3,300/ha in France (€88.3 billion for 26.9 million hectares). A ratio of seven. This calculation, based on Eurostat's economic accounts for agriculture and the areas published by CBS and Agreste, is a rough estimate : it mixes all types of production, including soilless cultivation, and says nothing about margins. It nevertheless gives the right intuition.

This intensity stems from the very structure of Dutch agriculture : around 102,000 hectares of horticulture, including nearly 10,000 hectares of greenhouses, one of the most intensive dairy sectors in Europe, and a specialisation in very high value-added production (seeds, plants, flowers, vegetables). When a hectare of greenhouse generates several hundred thousand euros of turnover, the value of the soil beneath it no longer has much to do with that of a hectare of cereals in Champagne.

Care must be taken not to over-interpret, however : profitability per hectare only feeds through to land prices insofar as the farmer can capture that rent durably. Greenhouse production, precisely, depends less on the soil than on energy and technical capital. Productivity therefore explains part of the gap, not all of it.

Reason no. 2 : a scarcity of land with no equivalent in France

The Netherlands has 530 inhabitants per square kilometre, against 108 in France (Eurostat, 2024). The country is five times denser, on a territory where almost every hectare has been reclaimed, drained and developed. Land there is a scarce good in the strictest sense of the term.

This scarcity translates into permanent competition between uses : housing, infrastructure, business parks, energy production, and now rewilding. The Dutch State and the provinces are indeed buying farmland to meet their environmental targets, sometimes paying above the market price, something farming organisations regularly denounce and which an investigation by the media outlet Follow the Money has documented. By seeking to take land out of agriculture, the public authorities help push up the price of the land that remains.

To this physical scarcity is added a market scarcity. Around 33,900 hectares changed hands in 2025, barely 1.9% of the Dutch agricultural area. In such a narrow market, every available hectare is contested by several neighbours who need it, and the price is set at the level of the most constrained buyer. In France, the fluidity of the rural land market, sustained by a far higher volume of transactions, produces the opposite effect.

Reason no. 3 : production rights and the paradox of State buy-outs

Here is the mechanism least known in France, and probably the most powerful in the short term. Dutch agriculture is governed by a system of production rights and environmental constraints that turn the hectare into an essential commodity for the livestock farmer.

The fosfaatrechten (phosphate rights), introduced in 2018 to cap livestock effluents, were trading at €257 per kilogram in the summer of 2026, very close to the all-time high. Rabobank estimates that expanding a dairy herd by a single cow now requires an investment of around €70,000, rights included. In such a context, the hectare becomes the unavoidable vehicle for production capacity.

The end of the Dutch derogation from the Nitrates Directive amplifies the phenomenon considerably. Every farm must now have more hectares to spread the same volume of effluent. Rabobank and the Dutch farming press identify this « forced extensification » as the main driver of the recent price rise : livestock farmers are not buying land to produce more, but to go on producing as much.

Reason no. 4 : in France, a regulated land market that keeps prices in check

Let us cross to the other side of the border. If Dutch land is expensive because its market is free and tight, French land is cheap also because its market is governed by a regulatory framework with no equivalent in the Netherlands.

The centrepiece is the SAFER. Its land development agencies have a right of pre-emption coupled with a power to revise the price (articles L143-1 and L143-10 of the Rural Code) : when they consider the notified price excessive in the light of local values, they can pre-empt by offering a lower price, the seller then being able to withdraw from the sale or take the matter to court. Statistically, actual use of this right remains marginal. But its mere existence is enough : the simple possibility of a counter-offer disciplines the whole market, with notaries and sellers anticipating the threshold beyond which a transaction would become contestable. Added to this is the control of farm structures, which makes the enlargement of holdings subject to administrative authorisation.

In the Netherlands, there is nothing of the kind. Regular farm tenancy is admittedly governed by pachtnormen, rent standards set by the State, but the sale of land is entirely free : no public pre-emption, no price revision, no control of structures. An investor, a developer, a fund or a neighbour can buy there at whatever price they are willing to pay. The difference is structural : France has a regulated land market, the Netherlands a free one.

Reason no. 5 : tenancy law and the weight of let land

The second French peculiarity lies in the way land is held. According to the 2020 agricultural census, around 78% of France's utilised agricultural area is farmed under a tenancy. In the Netherlands, by contrast, pacht accounts for about a quarter of the area, the rest being owned outright by the farmer (Wageningen ER data, to be treated as an order of magnitude since they date from 2017).

This difference has two direct consequences for prices.

First, let land is worth less than unlet land. In France, the discount is measurable : €5,350/ha for let land against €6,460/ha for unlet land in 2025 (FNSAFER), a gap of around 17%. The statutory tenancy regime explains this discount : a nine-year lease renewed almost automatically, a right of renewal, a tenant's right of pre-emption, strictly regulated repossession. A buyer who is not the sitting farmer acquires an asset they cannot freely dispose of. Since the majority of French land is in this situation, the national average reflects it : the Dutch market is first and foremost a market for unlet land, which is structurally more expensive.

Second, the rent itself. The average French farm rent stands at €171/ha/year, against €941/ha in the Netherlands, the highest pacht in Europe (Eurostat, 2024). A rent 5.5 times higher mechanically « supports » a far higher market value, since the value of a rental asset is the ratio between its rent and the required rate of return. We detailed this mechanism in our article on farm rents in France and Europe.

Reason no. 6 : land taxation that changes everything

The last mechanism, often overlooked in comparisons : what matters to an owner is not the gross rent, but what is left of it after tax. And here again the two countries have made opposite choices.

According to a comparative study published in 2022 by the Fondation pour la recherche sur la biodiversité, the Netherlands applies an exemption of farmland from property tax (the cultuurgrondvrijstelling), favourable treatment of farm rental income, and very light transfer taxation for agricultural land. France, by contrast, combines a recurring property tax on unbuilt land, taxation of rental income that can reach the upper brackets of the scale plus social levies, and transfer duties among the highest in Europe. As this source is a single one and dates from 2022, these elements should be read as an overall trend rather than an up-to-date statement of the law : tax regimes evolve, and French law also includes significant relief mechanisms on transfer (partial exemption for rural property let under a long-term lease, the Dutreil scheme).

The economic mechanism itself is not open to debate : for the same gross rent, a higher net yield is capitalised into the price. Light taxation on ownership and transfer increases what a buyer can rationally pay.

Is French land really « cheap » ?

In absolute terms, the answer is yes, and not only compared with the Netherlands. France sits below the European average, far behind Flanders (€68,934/ha), Ireland (€50,375/ha), Denmark (€22,468/ha) or even Spain (€12,778/ha).

But « cheap » does not mean « undervalued ». The six mechanisms described above form a coherent system. France has organised its land market so that access to land remains possible for those who farm it : regulation of sale prices, capped rents, security for the tenant, control of enlargements. The result is a contained cost of setting up, but also constrained liquidity, a net yield compressed by taxation, and weak long-term capital appreciation. The Netherlands made the opposite choice : a free market, an asset that appreciates strongly, and a cost of access to land that has become prohibitive for a young farmer.

Neither of these two models is objectively superior : they optimise different objectives. For an investor, the practical consequence is twofold. French land offers a higher gross rental yield than that of its neighbours, precisely because the capital to be tied up is small. In return, the expected capital gain is structurally more modest, and the regulatory framework limits purely wealth-building strategies. What is gained in entry yield is not recovered in capital appreciation.

Would you like to see where the value of your plots sits in this landscape ? Our observatory of farmland prices in France provides benchmarks by region, and our land valuation study offers you an estimate based on real transactions in your area.

Conclusion

The 1-to-15 gap between France and the Netherlands does not have one cause, it has six, which multiply one another : a value produced per hectare seven times higher, a physical scarcity of land with no equivalent, production rights that make the hectare indispensable, an entirely free sales market where France regulates, an agriculture of owner-farmers versus an agriculture of tenants, and much lighter land taxation. Each of these factors, taken in isolation, would explain a gap of 30 or 50%. It is their combination that produces a ratio of fifteen.

One open question remains, which the comparison does not settle : is the Dutch trajectory, where a young livestock farmer needs several million euros of capital to set up, sustainable ? And conversely, will the French model, which preserves access to land at the cost of a very low return for the owner, withstand the gradual withdrawal of family landlords ? We will continue this series with the most atypical market of all when it comes to land prices : vineyards.

Find out more

• Farm rents : France compared with the rest of Europe
• Observatory of farmland prices in France
• Discover the value of your land
• Get in touch with a rural land professional

Sources : DVF database (Demandes de valeurs foncières), DGFiP, analysis by ma-propriete.fr of 73,000 transactions 2021-2025 ; Eurostat, apri_lprc (land prices) and apri_lrnt (rents) ; Eurostat news release of 28 January 2026 ; Eurostat metadata apri_lpr_esms ; Kadaster, agricultural land market ; FNSAFER, Le Prix des Terres 2026 ; CBS, facts and figures on Dutch agriculture ; Rabobank, land market and dairy farming ; Boerderij, phosphate rights barometer ; Algemene Rekenkamer, Lbv and Lbv-plus schemes ; Follow the Money, the State and land prices ; Destatis, Kaufwerte landwirtschaftlicher Grundstücke ; FRB, taxation of farmland in Europe (2022) ; Insee, 2020 agricultural census.