900 Agri, horticultural farms reduce in country in a year
Published : 17 Nov 2021, 03:51
There were 44,700 agricultural and horticultural enterprises in Finland in 2021, according to preliminary data in the register of agricultural and horticultural enterprises.
The decrease in the number of agricultural and horticultural enterprises continued like in previous years, showing a decrease of 900 farms from 2020, said the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) referring to the data in a press release on Tuesday.
Agricultural and horticultural enterprises used 2.3 million hectares of fields, of which leased fields accounted for 850,000 hectares.
The size of leased fields increased by nearly 77,000 hectares. In ten years, the average farm area has grown from 41 to 51 hectares. The average area was more than 60 hectares in the regions of Southwest Finland, Northern Ostrobothnia and Uusimaa ELY Centres.
“Until now, farmland has found its users, and fields of discontinued farms have either been leased or sold to other farms. It is a completely different matter what will happen to fields in the future. Currently, some 45 per cent of agricultural land in use are used in grass crop production or as fallows. If livestock production decreases significantly, part of the grass crop area will also be released for other uses. What they will be used for in the future and how large a part will become environmental management areas remains to be seen,” said Anna-Kaisa Jaakkonen, senior statistician at Luke.
Even though the majority (38,000) of Finnish agricultural and horticultural farms are family-run, the number of limited liability companies has increased. This year, limited liability farms (a little more than 1,200 farms) accounted for almost three per cent of all farms. Instead, the number of farming syndicates fell below 4,000.