More than £7.5bn is waiting to be invested in UK farmland - enough to buy roughly six year's supply - Savills is to reveal next week as it launches a model for long-range land price forecasts.

The global economic crisis has spurred interest in British farmland way above the roughly 170,000 acres put up for sale every year, the real estate group is to say following an analysis of its customer register.

"Historically farmland is regarded as a safe haven in time of economic uncertainty," Crispin Holborrow, head of Savills' country department, says in a report due for publication next week.

"This proved to be the case during 2009."

At an average price of £7,500 an acre, the cash, raised from a range of sources including City bonuses and private wealth, would buy 1m acres, equivalent to the area publicly marketed over the last six years.

Savills believes an additional 10-15% of land is sold privately.

'No sharp increase' 

The report adds that this wall of money should support a continuing rise in land prices.

However, price rises will be limited to 5-6% by 2015, with only a portion of it actually ending up invested.

"These funds are often interested only in larger parcels which can be very hard to find," Mr Bailey said.

Mr Holborrow says in the report: "Some buyers, frustrated by the inability to find what they are after will look to other investments, which are more easily accessible in the volumes required for modern day trading.

"As a result, we do not expect to see a sharp increase in land values this year."

Prediction model 

The growth estimate of 5-6% a year, sufficient to good quality arable land above £10,000 an acre "well before" 2015, is supported by a land price model Savills has developed from 35 years of historic data.

The model, which Savills says is the "most comprehensive" forecasting tool available, factors in criteria including wheat prices, agricultural subsidies, farming income and country house values.

It does not, however, include an adjustment for low supplies.

"Our research shows that supply constraints may not have affected farmland values to the degree that we all had presumed," Mr Bailey said.