THE price of agricultural land in Wiltshire has reached record levels and is creating life-changing opportunities for the county’s farmers.

Richard Nocton, a partner with Salisbury-based agent Woolley & Wallis, said: “Agricultural land values have reached unprecedented levels and for good quality arable land, £10,000 per acre is now the norm.

“This figure is a real life-changing amount for most farmers. Values in some cases this year have already vastly exceeded this level and have approached £13,000 or £14,000 per acre in exceptional deals. The rise is partly down to a lack of supply and fierce demand from both farmers and investors.”

“Our Marlborough office has seen a number of investors looking for a safe haven in which to invest their capital.

“Agricultural land has many advantages: a steady return, good growth prospects and significant taxation advantages.”

His comments follow a report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Royal Agricultural University which shows that, nationally, the cost of farmland rose by three per cent in the first half of 2014 to £9,594 an acre.

This means that land prices are now 12 per cent higher than a year ago and farmland now costs more than four times what it did when RICS first began recording rural land market data in 1994.

An RICS spokesman said: “In the face of growing concerns around housing shortages and burgeoning populations, investors increasingly are seeing land as an economic safe haven.

“The latest data show that growth in demand for farmland continues to outstrip that of supply and this is pushing up prices and supporting expectations for further increases over the course of the next 12 months.

“Demand remains very strong on the commercial side, particularly from farmers keen to expand production on to neighbouring plots.

“Significantly, however, there has been a revival in residential or ‘lifestyle’ demand, which only began to start growing at the end of 2013 having been more or less flat since 2008. This coincides with the broader turnaround in the UK housing market.”