Abstract Book of the 4th World Conference on Business, Management, and Economics
Year: 2025
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Selected Indicators of the Agricultural Sector in the European Union
Matej Čereš, Dominika Čeryová, Zuzana Kapsdorferová
ABSTRACT:
Agriculture plays a key role in the modern world due to its multifaceted impact. In the last three decades, global, as well as Slovak, agricultural enterprises have undergone significant changes driven by socio-economic transformations, shifts in agricultural policy, institutional reforms, and the adoption of new tools. An analysis of selected indicators of the agricultural sector in the European Union points to significant differences in the structure and performance of agricultural holdings between Member States. In 2020, there were a total of 9.1 million agricultural enterprises operating in the EU-27, with the highest shares in Romania (31.8%), Poland (14.4%), Italy (12.5%) and Spain (10.1%). The vast majority of these entities (94.8%) were family farms, though France and Estonia had notable proportions of non-family farms. Almost two thirds of farms operated on an area of less than 5 ha, while only 7.5% of holdings with an area of over 50 ha operated more than two thirds of the agricultural land. Slovakia had one of the smallest shares of farms (2%) but one of the largest average farm sizes (81 ha) and a high concentration of land in large farms. 3.3 million smallest farms in the EU-27 produced only 1% of the total standard output, while the 3.3% of the largest farms accounted for more than half of the output. Between 2005 and 2020, the number of farms in the EU-27 decreased by 37%, with the decline mainly affecting small holdings, while the total land area remained stable. These results highlight ongoing consolidation in European agriculture and the growing dominance of large farms.
Keywords: Agricultural Land; Agricultural Policy; Consolidation; Family Farms; Sustainable Agriculture