EU farm numbers falling, say new figures

New figures from the EU's Farm Structure Survey says more than a quarter farms in the European Union have been lost in the past decade.

In the last decade there has been a general tendency for a reduction in the number of agricultural holdings in the EU. For the 19 EU Member States the total number of holdings fell by an average of 25.5 %.

This downward tendency can be seen in all 19 of these Member States

Most countries recorded a fall in their respective number of holdings between these two survey years, as the only exceptions were Ireland, Croatia, Malta and Portugal, where the number of holdings was higher in 2010 than in 2007.

The farm labour force also fell in all 18 EU Member States.

The overall change during these ten years ranged from -11.7 % in Germany to -41.8 % in Finland, with Ireland (-1.8 %) above this range and Slovakia (-58.9 %) below it.

Most of the 23 Member States for which 2010 data are available also recorded a fall in their respective farm labour forces when compared with the situation in 2007, the exceptions being Malta (a 15.4 % increase), Ireland (12.1 %), Portugal (7.5 %) and Hungary (5.0 %).

The largest declines in the agricultural labour force between 2007 and 2010 were in Slovakia, Austria, Cyprus, Romania and Italy, all of which saw their respective labour forces contract by at least one quarter.

There was a 16.1 % fall in the EU-28’s agricultural labour force between 2007 and 2010, from 11.9 million annual work units (AWU) to 9.9 million annual work units.