Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 January 2024
1265. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farms in Ireland in each of the past ten years; how many people have been working in farming full time in each of the past ten years; how many farmers have been working in farming on a part time basis in each of the past ten years; and the number of farmers who have left the sector in each of the past ten years. [1545/24]
View answerMy Department continually monitors farm structures and levels of employment in agriculture and the wider agri-food sector.
The number of farms in Ireland is recorded every ten years in the Census of Agriculture (COA), with 2010 and 2020 being the most recent years, with the Farm Structure Survey (FSS) taking place periodically in between, in 2013 and 2016. The number of farms was recorded as 139,829 in the COA 2010, decreasing to 135,027 in the COA 2020. The below table shows the total number of farms recorded in Ireland since 2010.
|
Source of CSO data |
Number of Farms |
|
2010 Census of Agriculture |
139,829 |
|
2013 Farm Survey |
139,600 |
|
2016 Farm Survey |
137,500 |
|
2020 Census of Agriculture |
135,035 |
Employment figures are primarily sourced from the Central Statistics Office's (CSO) quarterly Labour Force Survey (LFS). The table below shows the number of people who identify as working full time in farming (crop and animal production) in each of the past ten years, over the period 2013-2022. This does not include those working in the wider agri-food sector such as in forestry, fishing, wood processing and manufacture of food and beverages. When these are included, the CSO figure for employment in the agri-food sector is 164,900, or 6.5% of total employment in 2022.
|
|
Number of Full Time Farmers (crop and animal production) |
|
2013 |
104,350 |
|
2014 |
101,600 |
|
2015 |
104,000 |
|
2016 |
106,800 |
|
2017 |
103,775 |
|
2018 |
101,925 |
|
2019 |
97,675 |
|
2020 |
96,300 |
|
2021 |
100,900 |
|
2022 |
95,525 |
It should be noted that the Labour Force Survey is based on the main employment a person reports in the survey even where they have off-farm employment and so the number of part-time farmers is not available on an annual basis.
Where a part-time farmer reports their off-farm job as their main employment, they will not be recorded as working in primary agriculture. However, the Census of Agriculture acknowledges the many farm holders and their family members who work part-time on the land in addition to their main employment, indicating that there were 278,580 family and regular non-family workers on Irish farms in 2020. This number has actually increased from each of the two previous agriculture censuses, with 272,016 family and regular non-family workers in 2010 and 257,948 in 2000.
As another measure of part time employment, Teagasc in their annual National Farm Survey outline that up to 37% of farm holders had off-farm employment in 2022, while 57% of farm holders and/or their spouse had an off farm employment. The above data demonstrates the volatility of employment in the sector, with movement between full-time and part-time employment depending on prevailing macroeconomic conditions.
