Farms: Tenants

(asked on 12th January 2023) - View Source

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

To ask His Majesty's Government how many farms were in tenanted occupation in each of the last five years.


Answered by
Lord Benyon Portrait
Lord Benyon
Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 26th January 2023

Statistical estimates of the number of commercial agricultural holdings in England in each of the last five years are shown in the table below, split by tenure type (solely owned, solely rented or mixed).

Commercial holdings are those registered with the Rural Payments Agency for payments or livestock purposes and with significant levels of farming activity (as recorded in responses to the Defra June Survey of Agriculture or the Cattle Tracing System). Holdings are only included if they have more than five hectares of agricultural land, one hectare of orchards, 0.5 hectares of vegetables or 0.1 hectares of protected crops, or more than 10 cows, 50 pigs, 20 sheep, 20 goats or 1,000 poultry.

Number of commercial holdings in England by tenure type

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020 (c)

2021

Solely owned

56,446

54,495

54,923

55,750

:

57,081

Solely rented

14,125

14,536

14,630

14,527

:

14,562

Mixed tenure (a)

35,249

35,954

35,625

34,777

:

32,371

Tenure not declared (b)

1,033

940

857

1,046

:

1,206

Total

106,853

105,925

106,035

106,100

107,079

105,220

: represents data that are not available or have not been collected.

(a) Mixed tenure - includes farms with land both rented and owned.

(b) Tenure not declared - a very small number of holdings provide farmed areas but no detail on ownership. Assumption of tenure cannot be made.

(c) It was not possible to run a full-scale June Survey in 2020 due to the Coronavirus outbreak. A small-scale survey was run instead to allow us to produce national estimates of key crop areas and livestock populations. As a result, detailed breakdowns are not available

A longer data series is available for England at Agricultural land ownership in England (www.gov.uk).

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