Kieran Coughlan: What the nitrates decision means for land prices

Will a two-tier system emerge where land which can carry a higher stocking rate command higher rents than restricted lands?

Stories still circulate of farmers who back in the 1970s and 1980s were able to pay for their land out of a short number of harvests.

Ireland’s land prices are on the up and perhaps at a more pronounced rate in recent years than has been the case for more than a decade.

There are a variety of factors which are leading to strong demand for land. Of course, there are the subconscious drivers stemming from centuries of subsistence tenancies where those who came before us were locked out of land ownership, the association of land ownership with status and the inalienable truth that to stand still in farming is to go backwards where absent of expansion a farm would become unviable.