Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what data her Department holds on the number of farms that have become (a) insolvent and (b) ceased trading in the last three years.

The numbers of companies with Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007 code 011, 012, 013, 014, 015 and 016 that entered insolvency in the UK in the last three years (2023 to 2025) are presented in the table below. This information has been provided by the Department for Business and Trade.

The Insolvency Service’s Monthly Company Insolvencies Official Statistics Publication provides more information and a breakdown of SIC codes.

Information on business closures for farms is best obtained from the Office for National Statistics’ quarterly business demography publication. This release is regarded as ‘official statistics in development’. However, it is not possible to separately identify farm closures from within the published group which contains them, which is ‘Agriculture, forestry and fishing’.

Business closures in the UK for Agriculture, forestry and fishing from the first quarter of 2023 until the fourth quarter of 2025 are shown in the table below.

UK Agriculture, forestry and fishing business closures