Eurostat: Romania has one third of EU’s farms, but only 3.4 percent of output

Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union, shows that one third of EU’s farms were located in Romania in 2016, while another third being found in Poland, 14 percent, Italy, 10 percent in 2013, and Spain with 9 percent.

The statistics further show that 65 percent of EU farms were less than 5 hectares in size. Moreover, 7 percent of the farms covered 50 ha or more.

“Among Member States, this distribution was most contrasting in Romania; nine in every ten farms (92% or 3.1 million farms) were smaller than 5 ha, but the 0.5 percent of farms of 50 ha or more in size farmed half (51 percent) of all the UAA in the country.

Larger farms (of 50 hectares or more) were much more common in Luxembourg (52 percent of farms), France (41 percent), the United Kingdom (39 percent) and Denmark (35 percent). In most Member States, a majority of UAA was concentrated on the largest farms (50 ha or more in size),” said Eurostat.

More than half of the standard output generated by agriculture in the EU was from farms in France (17 percent), Germany (13 percent), Italy (12 percent in 2013) and Spain (11 percent in 2016).

“Although Romania accounted for about one third of the EU’s farms, they accounted for only 3.4 percent of the EU’s standard output,” said the statistics office.

Across the EU, there were 10.3 million people working as farm managers in 2016. One third of them were 65 years of age more. Only 11 percent of them were under the age of 40. Only about three in ten EU farm managers were women.