A Frisian farmer wants to get rid of the system. A bank finances a new barn. You have to expand that one to make money again. And so on and so forth. Bartele Holtrop from Rotstergaast wants to get out of that pattern. At Omrop Fryslân he says "The money is in intensive farming, because a bank wants to see returns. The more cows, the more money can be made." So instead of applying for a new loan from the bank, he sells bonds.
The organic farmer does so in a special way. Holtrop has divided his land into a thousand pieces. Anyone can invest in such a piece of land with a 1,000-euro bond. Seventy bonds have now been sold. Eventually, the farmer hopes to sell a thousand.
"With such a bond, you are a kind of co-owner. You get a return on that and we repay the loan at the bank," Holtrop said. "With that, we hope to get out of the rat race to move away from always more milk, cows and tractors."
Investors do not become owners of land. So they also get no say over the farm or its policies. Yet there is much to gain, Holtrop explains. "They get more interest than they get at the bank now."
The investment period is between 10 and 30 years. "You get interest back or you can get it in the form of food," says the farmer. "Meat, butter or eggs for your money: basically, it's just back to basics. I take out the middlemen."
Selling bonds in the agricultural world is new, but companies and institutions have been doing it for much longer. It allows them to keep things in their own hands. Not insignificant, says Holtrop. He points out that the bank has already raised interest rates on loans three times in a short time. Then selling bonds is more pleasant, he argues. "This allows us to continue in a sustainable way."
Of course, anything can go wrong. His company could go bankrupt, for instance, Holtrop acknowledges. But the land keeps its value and can be reused as farmland, perhaps just with the same bondholders.
Source: NOS
