Over 278,000 people worked on farms in 2020, according to the final detailed results of the Census of Agriculture carried out by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Just under 278,600 individuals contributed to farm work in 2020 on around 130,200 farms over 5ha in size.
Males accounted for 73% of these people, as well as 80% of the volume of farm labour, in terms of annual work units (AWUs).
According to Eurostat, the EU body for statistics, an AWU corresponds to the work performed by one person who is occupied on an agricultural holding on a full-time basis.
Of all the farms included in the census, 1,686 undertook organic farming activity in 2020.
53% of farm holders stated that farming was their sole occupation. Less than half (46%) of them had a succession plan in place.
The average gross production/farm in 2020 was €48,380, while the median standard output stood at €13,566 (i.e. half of farms had less output than this figure and half had more).
The detailed results of the Census of Agriculture 2020 were announced by the CSO today (Thursday, May 26). It takes place every 10 years as part of EU rules on statistics collection.
It includes statistics on farm structure, farmer demographics, livestock and land utilisation on farms.
The results today also provide details on organic farming, the farming labour force, animal housing and manure management.
Selected statistics are available at the electoral district level, which can be found on the CSO’s online data portal Pxstat.
Available statistics at this level include the number of holdings, average size of holdings, livestock numbers, age of holders and land utilisation.
Some of the key statistics announced by the CSO include:
- Agricultural labour input:
- 278,600 persons contributed to farm work in 2020, on 130,200 farms of over 5ha;
- 47% of them (130,200) were farm holders, 41% (114,300) were family members; and the remaining 12% (34,100) were non-family members;
- More than half (53%) of farm holders stated that farming was their only occupation, while 26% said it was their subsidiary occupation;
- Males accounted for 73% of persons working on farms and 80% of the volume of farm labour in AWUs;
- 46% of farm holders had a succession plan in place and 98% of these had named a family member as their successor;
- Standard output:
- In 2020, the average gross production/farm was €48,380, and the median output was €13,566;
- On farms under 10ha, the average output was €12,557, while the average on farms above 100ha was €276,891;
- Specialist dairying and other farm systems had the largest average standard output in 2020, with €209,006 and €338,416 respectively;
- Farms with higher gross production are generally larger in area – farms with standard output between €50,000 and €100,000 had an average area utilised of 57.9ha, while those with standard output over €100,000 had an average of 82.5ha.
- Organic farming:
- A total of 1,686 farms had organic farming activity of livestock or land in 2020;
- The area utilised for organics was 73,800ha, or 1.6% of the total 4.5 million hectares of farmland;
- The number of fully converted farm buildings was 1,540, just over 91% of all organic farm buildings;
- Almost all (96%) of total organic area in the state consisted of grassland, while the remainder was mainly cereals;
- There were 51,685 organic cattle on 1,157 farm holdings in 2020, 5.5% of which were dairy cows, 34.1% were other cows, and 60.4% were other cattle;
- There were 74,870 organic sheep in 378 flocks in 2020.