Landowners gain little from labor-intensive crop rules, so they lobby elsewhere.

Evidence

Landowners are also frequently identified as the ultimate beneficiaries of protective agricultural policies. Although this is likely an important interest group with regard to the market protection of crops that are especially land intensive, in Germany less than 5 per cent of total farm land is cultivated with seasonal, labor-intensive crops (although these crops account for about 40 per cent of total sales from crops in Germany). Therefore, there are much more attractive policy arenas where landowners can invest in lobbying activities, for instance the emerging land-intensive production of bioenergies. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 991

Categorization

• SHARE: The 5 percent of land versus 40 percent of crop sales split is a nice numbers-for-one-person detail for anyone who thinks about agricultural lobbying.