Every month, more than one billion is given in support to Danish agriculture, and the majority of that money comes from the EU's agricultural support. Two-thirds of the money is paid out according to how many hectares a landowner has. This means that large farms get the biggest gain, which is getting bigger and bigger. At the same time, 1,3 full-time farms closed every day in 2024, and there are currently fewer than 5.800 full-time farms left. The hectare support, as it is now, is therefore helping to drive the negative structural development we see in agriculture today, and is one of the main reasons for the challenge of generational change in agriculture. On top of that, Denmark is the country in the EU that spends by far the least money on supporting rural areas, nature and small-scale agriculture. Let's take some examples.

A new scheme in agricultural support is the so-called organic schemes, where farmers can receive extra support to do something good for the environment, climate or nature. The organic schemes are intended as the carrot that will get agriculture to take green initiatives. But Denmark's implementation of these organic schemes has been a resounding failure. We are the country in the EU that spends the second least money on these schemes, and the money we spend has almost no effect. Why? Because we have designed the schemes inappropriately. Danish farmers can only choose between four organic schemes – the lowest number in the entire EU. In comparison, Lithuania offers 16 different schemes that have a much broader scope.

At the same time, the four Danish organic schemes rarely benefit small and medium-sized farms. The organic schemes are therefore designed more for large farms. Our few schemes are so unattractive that only 60 percent of the allocated budget was used in 2023. Instead, one could imagine an organic scheme that supported organic fruit and vegetable production in Denmark. Only 0,6 percent of Denmark's cultivated area is currently used to grow fruit and vegetables for human consumption. In a time of talk about the importance of self-sufficiency, it is strange that our own food supply is not prioritized.

Denmark is a bottom-scraper when it comes to redistributing support from large to small farms. To support small and medium-sized farms, the EU has just created a tool for member states, where they must use at least 10 percent of the hectare support for redistribution, but the Danish government, together with only one other EU country, has chosen to ignore this mandatory tool completely. The result? The largest farms swallow by far the majority of the billions in support, while small and medium-sized farms – the backbone of many local communities – struggle to survive. This promotes land concentration, so that Danish soil is distributed in fewer and fewer hands.

This increases indebtedness, as the individual farmer needs more and more capital to buy a farm. And it makes it more difficult for young farmers to start their own farm, as the per hectare subsidy encourages speculation in land and continues to push up prices. In short, all other EU countries are doing better than Denmark.

We can start by creating more and better organic schemes that actually reward close-to-nature and agro-ecological farming that takes care of our drinking water and the micro-life in the soil. And then we can activate redistributive support so that small and medium-sized farms get a fair chance, while ensuring that the new generation has access to land by ending the per-hectare support. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to use agricultural support as it was intended: to create common goods for common money.

This opinion piece was published in Jyllands-Posten on 27/11/2025. 

The senders are: 

ANDERS LED BEHREND Deputy Chairman, Free Farmers – Living Land, JACOB WESTERGAARD ​​MADSEN Association Director, Andelsgaarde, MICHELLE SKELSGAARD ​​SØRENSEN Food Policy Advisor, Green Transition Denmark, TOBIAS UNGER COFF Board Member, Copenhagen Food Community, EMMA LETH Secretary, Association for Regenerative Agriculture, LOTTE NYSTRUP LUND Co-founder of the Biomagine community, HARALD KRABBE Farmer and co-founder of the Biomagine community.