Agriculture statistics - family farming in the EU

Data from October 2016. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database. Planned article update: May 2019.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) declared 2014 to be the International year of family farming. As a follow-up to this initiative, the Family Farming Knowledge Platform was created. It gathers information on family farming from all over the world, including national laws and regulations, public policies, best practices, relevant data and statistics, research, articles and publications.

The FAO defines a family farm as ‘… an agricultural holding which is managed and operated by a household and where farm labour is largely supplied by that household’. Family farms are by far the most common type of farm in the European Union (EU), encompassing a wide range of agricultural holdings (hereafter referred to as farms): from small, semi-subsistence farms with only family workers and farms which have to rely on other gainful activities for a diversified source of income, through to much larger, more productive farms which nevertheless maintain family management. This article presents data from the most recent farm structure survey (FSS) which was conducted across the EU in 2013.

Table 1: Analysis of key indicators according to the extent of the family labour force, EU-28, 2013
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 1: Share of total number of holdings according to the extent of the family labour force, EU-28, 2013
(% of farm holdings)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 2: Share of utilised agricultural area according to the extent of the family labour force, EU-28, 2013
(% of utilised agricultural area)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 3: Average size of holdings according to the extent of the family labour force, EU-28, 2013
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Table 2: Analysis of the number of holdings and utilised agricultural area according to the extent of the family labour force, 2013
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 4: Distribution of the number of holdings according to the extent of the family labour force, 2013
(% of farm holdings)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 5: Distribution of the utilised agricultural area according to the extent of the family labour force, 2013
(% of utilised agricultural area)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 6: Distribution of farm livestock according to the extent of the family labour force, 2013
(% of all livestock)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 7: Distribution of the regular labour force according to the extent of the family labour force, 2013
(% of regular farm labour force)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Map 1: Average utilised agricultural area per holding for farms with only family workers, 2013
(hectares)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Map 2: Average utilised agricultural area per holding for farms with no family labour force, 2013
(hectares)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Table 3: Analysis of the number of managers according to their age and the extent of the family labour force, EU-27, 2013
(thousands)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 8: Distribution of managers according to their age and the extent of the family labour force, EU-27, 2013
(% of total number of managers of all ages)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 9: Distribution of managers according to their age and the extent of the family labour force, EU-27, 2013
(% of total number of managers for the specified extent of the family labour force)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Table 4: Analysis of the number of managers according to their age and the extent of the family labour force, 2013
(thousands)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 10: Distribution of managers on farms with only family workers, by age of manager, 2013
(% of total number of managers working in farms with only family workers)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 11: Distribution of managers on farms where family workers make up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force, by age of manager, 2013
(% of total number of managers working in farms where family workers make up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 12: Distribution of managers on farms where family workers make up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force, by age of manager, 2013
(% of total number of managers working in farms where family workers make up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Figure 13: Distribution of managers on farms with no family labour force, by age of manager, 2013
(% of total number of managers working in farms with no family workers)
Source: Eurostat (Farm Structure Survey, 2013)

Main statistical findings

Structural profile of farms classified according to the extent of the family labour force - an analysis for the EU-28

Family farms accounted for more than 19 out of 20 farms across the EU …

Family farms dominate the structure of EU agriculture in terms of their numbers, their contribution to agricultural employment and, to a lesser degree, the area of land that they cultivate. There were 10.8 million farms in the EU-28 in 2013, with the vast majority of these (96.2 %) classified as family farms. Based on the FAO definition, the term ‘family farm’ is hereafter used to refer to any farm under family management where 50 % or more of the regular agricultural labour force was provided by family workers; a more detailed division can be made between those farms where labour was provided exclusively by the family (farms with only family workers) and those where 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the labour force were family workers.

… while they farmed two thirds of the cultivated agricultural land

Across all of the farms in the EU-28, family farms used 85.5 % of the regular agricultural labour force and reared 69.7 % of all livestock in 2013. Their share of the total utilised agricultural area was somewhat lower, as they accounted for two thirds (66.3 %) of the EU-28’s farmed area (see Table 1). This may be attributed to many family farms being households that operate on a semi-subsistence basis (producing agricultural products essentially for their own consumption).

Farms with only family workers accounted for a majority of farming activity

Farms with only family workers (in other words, those where 100 % of the labour input on the farm was provided by family members) accounted for 93.7 % of the total number of farms in the EU-28 in 2013. Farms with only family workers used almost four fifths (78.8 %) of the total regular agricultural labour force, they cultivated more than half (54.3 %) of the total agricultural area and reared more than half (52.1 %) of all livestock.

Non-family farms cultivated almost one third of the total utilised agricultural area

In 2013, there were 89 thousand farms in the EU-28 where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force and 327 thousand farms with no family labour force at all. Together, these ‘non-family farms’ accounted for 3.8 % of the total number of farms in the EU-28 and they cultivated just over one third (33.7 %) of the utilised agricultural area.

Farms with no family labour were more prevalent than farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force. Farms with no family labour accounted for 3.0 % of all EU-28 farms, cultivated more than one quarter (27.8 %) of the utilised agricultural area, reared between one fifth and one quarter (22.9 %) of all livestock, and employed just over one tenth (10.8 %) of the regular agricultural labour force in 2013. By contrast, EU-28 farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force accounted for 0.8 % of all farms, some 3.7 % of the regular agricultural labour force, 5.8 % of the cultivated land, and 7.4 % of the reared livestock.

Farms with no family labour force cultivated an average area that was almost 16 times as large as the average area cultivated by farms with only family workers

Figure 3 shows that family farms were, on average, consistently smaller than non-family farms in terms of their utilised agricultural area; this was particularly true for farms with only family workers. Across the whole of the EU-28 in 2013, farms with only family workers utilised, on average, 9.3 hectares (ha) of agricultural land. At 77.4 hectares per farm, the land cultivated by farms where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100%) of the regular labour force was eight times as high as the average for farms with only family workers. Among non-family farms, the average agricultural area of farms reached 114.7 hectares per holding for those farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force, and peaked at 148.7 hectares per holding for farms with no family labour; this latter figure was almost 16 times as high as the average for farms with only family workers.

There was a wide disparity in the average number of animals reared by type of farm. In order to facilitate the comparison of livestock data, the different species are converted into livestock units. Farms in the EU-28 with only family workers had an average of 6.7 livestock units (LSUs) per holding in 2013 compared with an average of 84.3 LSU per farm where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force. Farms with no family labour force in the EU-28 reared, on average, 91.2 LSUs in 2013, while farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force reared, on average, 108.6 LSUs. As such, the average number of livestock reared in farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force was more than 16 times as high as on farms with only family workers.

EU-28 farms with only family workers had, on average, a regular labour force of 0.7 annual work units (AWUs) per holding in 2013; in other words, on average the total work performed on these farms over the course of a year was equivalent to 70 % of the work performed by a single person working full-time. Among farms where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force, the average size of the labour force was just over three times as high (at 2.1 AWUs), while for farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force it was more than five times as high (3.7 AWUs). While farms with no family labour force cultivated an agricultural area that was, on average, 15.9 times as large as the agricultural area cultivated by farms with only family workers, the average labour force on farms with no family labour (2.9 AWUs) was merely 4.2 times as high as average the labour force on farms with only family workers.

Structural profile of farms classified according to the extent of the family labour force - an analysis for the EU Member States

Almost three fifths of family farms in the EU-28 were located in Romania, Italy or Poland

Of the 10.4 million family farms in the EU-28 in 2013, more than one third (34.5 %) were located in Romania, while Poland (13.6 %) was the only other EU Member State to record a double-digit share of the EU-28 total, followed by Italy (9.4 %).

Family farms in the EU-28 cultivated some 116 million hectares of utilised agricultural area in 2013. The largest areas under cultivation by family farms were located in Spain and France (almost 15 million hectares each) with 12.7 % and 12.6 % shares of the EU-28 total, while Poland (11.0 %), the United Kingdom (10.7 %) and Germany (10.3 %) also recorded double-digit shares.

Family farms in the United Kingdom were, on average, more than 60 times as large as family farms in Malta

Family farms in Malta cultivated on average just 1.1 hectares of utilised agricultural area in 2013. Family farms were also relatively small — on the basis of this measure — in Romania, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Portugal, Croatia and Poland, as family farms in these countries cultivated an area of less than 10.0 hectares on average. At the other end of the spectrum, the largest family farms were in the United Kingdom (an average of 72.2 hectares per holding), while family farms in Luxembourg and Denmark cultivated the next largest areas, 55–60 hectares on average.

Almost one third of the non-family farms in the EU-28 were located in France

Turning to the non-family farms, of the 415 thousand in the EU-28, almost one third (31.2 %) were located in France and more than one quarter (27.1 %) were located in Spain; none of the remaining EU Member States accounted for more than the 6.9 % share of the EU-28 total recorded by Romania.

Non-family farms in the EU-28 cultivated 59 million hectares of utilised agricultural area in 2013 (compared with 116 million hectares for family farms). More than one fifth (22.4 %) of the agricultural area in the EU-28 that was cultivated by non-family farms was located in France, while the next highest shares were recorded for Spain (14.7 %), Romania (9.9 %), the United Kingdom (8.5 %) and Germany (8.2 %).

On average, the smallest non-family farms were found in Malta (4.1 hectares of utilised agricultural area per farm), while non-family farms in the Cyprus, the Netherlands and Belgium were also relatively small; non-family farms in these three EU Member States cultivated, on average, less than 50 hectares of land in 2013. By contrast, the average size of non-family farms peaked in the Czech Republic at 766 hectares, while the average utilised agricultural area cultivated by non-family farms was at least 400 hectares per holding in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Ireland. The predominance of very large non-family farms in some eastern Member States may be linked to corporate farms (often production cooperatives) being preserved during and after the major structural agricultural reforms that took place in the 1990s.

France was the only EU Member State where family farms did not account for at least 80 % of the total number of farms

Figures 4–7 show the relative importance of family and non-family farms in 2013: data for family farms are presented in green. Family farms accounted for at least 99 % of all farms in Slovenia, Poland, Greece, Romania, Ireland, Malta and Lithuania, and for upwards of 90 % in all but six of the remaining EU Member States, with shares of 85–90 % in Spain, Slovakia, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Belgium; France stood apart from the other EU Member States as family farms accounted for less than three quarters (72.5 %) of all of its farms.

In five EU Member States, family farms cultivated less than half of the total agricultural area …

In 2013, family farms cultivated two thirds (66.4 %) of the EU-28’s utilised agricultural area. Their share of the utilised agricultural area peaked in Malta, at 96.9 %, while shares of at least 90 % were also recorded in Slovenia, the Netherlands, Ireland and Finland. By contrast, family farms cultivated the minority of the utilised agricultural area in Hungary, Estonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (16.6 % of the Slovakian utilised agricultural area).

… while six Member States reported that family farms reared less than half of all livestock

Figure 6 shows the distribution of livestock across different types of farm in 2013. Family farms reared a majority of the livestock in 22 of the EU Member States. The proportion of livestock reared by family farms rose above 90 % in Greece, Slovenia, Ireland and Austria, peaking in the latter at 96.6 %. By contrast, there were six Member States where less than half of all livestock was reared in family farms: four of these countries — Hungary, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — were also among those that reported that family farms accounted for less than half of the total agricultural area that was farmed; they were joined by Portugal and Cyprus.

Family farms accounted for more than 95 % of the labour input for agriculture in Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, Poland and Romania

The regular labour force of the EU-28’s agricultural sector was 22.2 million persons in 2013. Adjusted for their working time over the course of the year, the total labour input of the EU-28’s agricultural sector was 8.7 million AWUs. A comparison of these two figures gives some idea as to the magnitude of the part-time and seasonal nature of the labour force within the agricultural sector.

Family farms provided 85.5 % of the EU-28’s regular agricultural labour force in 2013 (in AWU terms). The share of the regular labour force working on family farms was over 95% in Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, Poland and Romania, while in the vast majority of the remaining EU Member States it was at least 70 %.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, family farms provided less than 30 % of the regular agricultural labour force

There were five EU Member States where the regular labour force share of family farms was less than 70 %: in Denmark (64.3 %) and France (53.3 %) the majority of the regular agricultural labour force was on family farms. However, a minority (48.4 %) of the regular labour force employed on Estonian farms worked on non-family farms, a share that fell to less than 30 % of the labour force in Slovakia (29.2 %) and the Czech Republic (27.9 %).

On average, the largest farms with only family workers were located in the United Kingdom, while the largest farms with no family labour were found in Greece

Map 1 focuses exclusively on farms with only family workers; it presents the average agricultural area per farm for 2013. The smallest average size of farms with only family workers was located in Malta, followed by Romania, Cyprus and Bulgaria. By contrast, the largest average size of farms with only family workers was located in the United Kingdom, followed by Luxembourg.

Map 2 presents the same information for farms without any family labour force. Greece recorded the largest average among the EU Member States, almost 1 900 hectares per farm without any family labour force in 2013, while the next highest average area was recorded in Ireland (921 hectares per farm). At the other end of the range, the smallest average size of farms with no family labour was reported in Malta (4.8 hectares per farm).

Luxembourg was the only EU Member State where farms with only family workers were, on average, larger than farms with no family labour force

In some of the EU Member States there were considerable differences between the average sizes (in terms of utilised agricultural area) of farms with only family workers and farms without any family labour force. For example, in 2013 in Greece, farms without any family labour force were, on average, 412 times as large as farms with only family workers. In Bulgaria and Romania the same ratio stood at over 100 : 1. By contrast, there was almost no difference in the average size of these two types of farm in Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands, while Luxembourg was the only EU Member State to report that farms with only family workers (52.1 hectares per holding) were, on average, larger than farms without any family labour force (18.0 hectares per holding).

Farm managers by age — an analysis for the EU-28

Almost one third of farm managers in the EU-28 were aged 65 years or over

There were 10.7 million farm managers in the EU-28 agricultural sector in 2013. Table 3 shows that some 3.3 million farm managers in the EU-28 were aged 65 or over, which was approximately 3 out of every 10 (31.1 %).

The vast majority of farm managers aged 65 years or over worked on family farms

Figure 8 presents an analysis of the age profile of farm managers in the EU-28 according to their age and type of farm. It shows that the most common age band for farm managers was that covering managers aged 65 or over, and that an absolute majority (55.7 %) of farm managers in the EU-28 were aged 55 or over, in other words approaching or beyond the regular pension age.

There were relatively few young farm managers in the EU-28 in 2013. Managers younger than 25 years accounted for 0.6 % of the total number of farm managers across all types of farm, while those younger than 35 years represented 6.0 % of all managers.

Figure 9 shows the proportion of EU-28 farm managers, by age, for four different types of farm in 2013. The most striking aspect is the high proportion of farms with only family workers who were managed by persons aged 65 or over (32.3 %) or by persons aged 55–64 (24.7 %). This could be contrasted with the results for farms without any family labour force, where across the EU-28 those aged 65 or over accounted for merely 8.7 % of all farm managers. These figures suggest that farm managers working for corporations and cooperatives were much more likely to have stopped managing farms by the age of 65.

Farm managers by age — an analysis for the EU Member States

As noted above, in 2013 some 6.0 % of farm managers in the EU-28 were young farm managers (defined here as those younger than 35 years). Poland had the highest proportions of young farm managers (12.1 % of all Polish farm managers) in 2013, while Austria (11.0 %) was the only other EU Member State to report that more than one tenth of its farm managers were younger than 35.

By contrast, in Portugal half (50.1 %) of all farm managers were aged 65 or over, while in Romania, Cyprus, Italy, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain at least one third of all farm managers were aged 65 or over. These figures suggest that older farm managers (working beyond 65) were principally located in the southern EU Member States and in several of the Member States that joined the EU in 2004 or more recently. However, there were some exceptions among those Member States that joined the EU in 2004 or more recently, most notably Poland where a relatively low proportion (9.6 %) of the total number of farm managers was aged 65 or over.

In Portugal, more than half of the managers in farms with only family workers were aged 65 and over, while in Germany the same share was 6.7 %

Figures 10–13 provide an analysis for 2013 of the distribution of farm managers by age, and for four different types of farm. Among farms with only family workers (see Figure 10) there were considerable differences in the age distribution of farm managers between EU Member States. For example, in Portugal, more than half (51.8 %) of all managers in farms with only family workers were aged 65 or over. This could be contrasted with the situation in Germany where just 6.7 % of managers in farms with only family workers were aged 65 or over; shares of less than 10.0 % were also recorded in Austria, Finland and Poland.

These examples are synonymous with more general patterns, namely, that older managers were more likely to continue working up to or beyond 65 in those EU Member States where relatively small, semi-subsistence, family farms predominated, for example in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and Romania. By contrast, the likelihood that managers in farms with only family workers would have stopped managing farms by the age of 65 was much higher in a group of EU Member States ranging from Luxembourg, France and Germany in the west, through Austria to Poland in the east, as well as in Finland in the north.

Figure 11 shows that for farms where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force, a smaller proportion of managers tended to work beyond the age of 65. The highest proportion was recorded (once again) in Portugal, where close to two fifths (39.8 %) of all managers working on farms where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force were aged 65 or over. This was considerably higher than in the other EU Member States, as the next highest share was recorded in Malta (30.8 %), followed by Latvia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus (all 22–28 %). At the other end of the spectrum, in Luxembourg there were no managers aged 65 or over working on farms where family workers made up 50 % or more (but not 100 %) of the regular labour force.

There was a much higher likelihood that farm managers working on non-family farms were aged 65 or over in several of the southern EU Member States

The situation in non-family farms is presented in Figures 12 and 13. The highest proportion of elderly farm managers (those aged 65 and over) in farms where family workers made up less than 50 % (but not 0 %) of the regular labour force was recorded in the southern EU Member States of Spain (51.0 %), Portugal (45.6 %), Greece (33.8 %) and Italy (32.6 %). On farms with no family labour force at all, elderly managers accounted for more than one fifth (22.8 %) of the total number of managers in Greece and for close to one fifth of the total in Italy (20.5 %) and Belgium (19.8 %).

It is interesting to contrast the situation in Romania in 2013 between farms with only family workers and farms with no family labour. For the former, Romania recorded the second highest proportion (41.3 %) of managers aged 65 or over, whereas the propensity for Romanian farm managers working in farms with no family labour to be aged 65 or over was considerably higher than the EU-28 average: just 3.1 % of the managers in Romanian farms with no family labour were aged 65 or over compared with an EU-28 average of 8.7 %.

Data sources and availability

Within the EU, the farm structure survey (FSS) is carried out every three or four years as a sample survey (the last of which was conducted in 2013), and once every 10 years as a census (the last of which was conducted in 2010). The legal basis for the FSS is Regulation (EC) No 1166/2008 of 19 November 2008, which defines the information to be collected from individual farms, observing strict rules of confidentiality, before comparable data are sent to Eurostat.

The FSS collects information about all farms and aims to present a detailed picture of the structure of agricultural activities, from an economic, social and environmental perspective, with data on:

• the size of farms in terms of utilised agricultural area and economic output;
• the farming system in use and its ownership;
• the type of agricultural products grown, their output, area and yield;
• the number and type of livestock;
• rural development, management;
• secondary activities and agro-environmental aspects;
• the agricultural labour force.

The results presented in this article cover the 2013 FSS which was carried out in the EU Member States as well as in Norway.

The basic unit underlying the FSS is the farm holding which is a technical-economic unit, under single management, engaged in agricultural production. Although the thresholds for defining a farm can be different between countries, the survey covers 98 % of the utilised agricultural area (excluding common land) and 98 % of the livestock of each country.

Key indicators and concepts

Using data from the latest FSS, and applying the FAO definition for family farms at an operational level, it is possible to analyse farms on the basis of their labour input. Family farms may be defined as:

• farms with exclusively family labour;
• farms that have predominately family labour (at least 50 % of the regular labour force).

By contrast, non-family farms are defined as:

• farms with predominately non-family labour (less than 50 % of the regular labour force);
• farms without any family labour.

Labour force data are provided in terms of a simple count of the number of persons as well as being converted into annual work units; due to the high share of seasonal and part-time work in agriculture, it is generally considered appropriate to assess labour input using data presented in annual work units. One annual work unit corresponds to the work performed by one person who is occupied on a farm on a full-time basis for a full year. Full-time means the minimum hours required by the national provisions governing contracts of employment. If these provisions do not explicitly indicate the number of hours, then 1 800 hours are taken to be the minimum (225 working days of eight hours each).

A livestock unit (LSU), is a reference unit which facilitates the aggregation of livestock from various species and age, through the use of specific coefficients established initially on the basis of the nutritional or feed requirement of each type of animal (with a set of coefficients for 23 different categories of animal). The reference unit used for the calculation of livestock units (= 1 LSU) is one adult dairy cow. For example, a single LSU corresponds to 10 sheep or goats.

Context

At the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, 2014 was designated as the international year of family farming. The FAO defines the concept of a family farm as ‘… an agricultural holding which is managed and operated by a household and where farm labour is largely supplied by that household’. The objective of the international year was to raise the profile of family farming.

Family farming is, by far, the most common farming model in Europe. Family farms are more likely to:

• be mixed farms (producing a broader range of crops, livestock and horticultural products);
• adopt more traditional farming practices (for example, smaller fields and so more field boundaries) which may preserve varied landscapes and habitats; this commitment of family farms to environmental aspects may also be linked to each generation having the responsibility to pass on land to the following generation in at least as good condition as it was inherited;
• fill niche markets and improve customer choice, for example, providing higher or lower quality, traditional, or regional products, for example, specialising in less intensive farming methods as a means of differentiating themselves from larger competitors.

The main challenges facing family farms often reflect issues that are common for all types of small business: access to resources (such as land and capital) or access to markets (particularly in relation to the bargaining power of small farms in the food chain). Demographics provide a social challenge for family farms, as inter-generational succession issues may impact upon the sustainability of family farming. This challenge is further complicated in some of the EU Member States by long-standing legislation over inheritance (which may influence land consolidation/fragmentation).

EU support to family farms through the common agricultural policy (CAP) is foreseen over the period 2014–2020. The small farmers’ scheme is part of the post-2013 CAP reforms, which provides small farmers with the opportunity to reduce red tape and accept a one-off, lump-sum payment to replace all direct payments. The CAP reforms for 2014–2020 also promote greater integration with regional and structural funds. This should allow small family farmers to receive business start-up aid, while young farmers will be eligible for a combination of measures including start-up grants, training and advisory services. All these efforts are designed to support the development of family farming, especially on a smaller (though commercial) scale.

See also

• Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics
• Farm structure survey — all articles

Further Eurostat information

Publications

• Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics — 2016 edition (Statistical book)
• Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics — 2015 edition (statistical book)

Main tables

• Agriculture (t_agri), see:

Farm structure (t_ef)

Database

• Agriculture (agri), see:

Farm structure (ef)

Farm structure — 2008 legislation (from 2005 onwards) (ef_main)

Key farm variables (ef_kv)

Overview — Farm land use (ef_olu)

Overview — Farm livestock (ef_ols)

Overview — Farm labour force (ef_olf)

Farm land use — Arable land (ef_ala)

Farm land use — Permanent crops, other farmland, irrigation (ef_po)

Farm livestock and fodder crops (ef_lsf)

Farm labour force (ef_lf)

Other gainful activities and support for rural development (ef_oga)

Farm management and practises (ef_mp)

Survey on agricultural production methods (SAPM, 2010) (ef_pm)

Farm structure – 1988 legislation (1990–2007) (ef_historic)

Dedicated section

• Agriculture

Methodology / Metadata

• Farm structure (ESMS metadata file — ef_esms)
• Farm structure survey — national methodological reports
• Farm structure survey (FSS) (background article)
• Farm structure survey – survey coverage (background article)

Source data for tables, figures and maps (MS Excel)

• Family farming in the EU: tables and figures

Other information

• Regulation (EC) No 1166/2008 on farm structure surveys and the survey on agricultural production methods
• Regulation (EC) No 1200/2009 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1166/2008 on farm structure surveys and the survey on agricultural production methods, as regards livestock unit coefficients and definitions of characteristics

External links

• European Commission — Common Agricultural Policy after 2013
• European Commission — Family farming: a dialogue towards more sustainable and resilient farming in Europe and the world
• European Commission — Rural Development Policy 2014–2020
• United Nations (FAO) — International Year of Family Farming
• United Nations (FAO) — Family Farming Knowledge Platform