Austria

Austria is a country with a rich agricultural history, high consumer patriotism and significant links between tourism and mountain farming.

Despite its high share of organic agriculture and recent promising growth of alternative supply chain models and food networks; Austria’s traditional small-scale structures within agriculture have diminished quickly over the last few decades, with farms increasing in size and the share of the population active in agriculture full-time decreasing drastically.

In Austria, land issues have not received adequate attention and information on access to land, land policies and land markets is relatively scarce. Loss of farmland as well as land concentration and speculation are crucial problems, but are not on the political agenda.