DANISH AGRICULTURE (6)

Danish agriculture is beginning to make money again; but not enough to be able to reduce its collective debts. Despite record low interest rates in recent years, the sector's debt has risen inexorably from kr.193 billion in 2002 to kr.362 billion in 2012.

One consequence is that farmers end up being tied to the land. The rules about farming are already quite strict - only a qualified farmer may live on, and work, a farm, for instance - so this simply makes the system even more inelastic. The new Business Minister Henrik Sass Larsen has made making agriculture more flexible his top priority. And rightly so.

Walter Blotscher