Organic cultivation and farmland prices: Does certification matter?
Lebenswissenschaftliche Fakultät
This paper investigates price differentials between organically and conventionally farmed arable
land. Organic commodities offer higher prices and environmental benefits such as improved
soil constitution, where land buyers gauge these benefits against lower yields at higher
risk, switching and higher production cost compared to conventional production. Combining
land transaction and cover data from EU’s Integrated Administrative Control System between
2005–2019, we test the hypothesis of positive valuation of organic cultivation, also for conventional
use after sale. Based on a double robust approach, we find on average no effect but
markups for conventional and markdowns for organic use post-sale.