Percentage distribution of farms by farmland area in hectares

The EU’s farming sector is described by Eurostat data as being composed of subsistence farms (where the production is consumed by the farmers and their families), small and medium-sized, family-run, farm businesses, and large agricultural enterprises. Most of the over 10 million EU farms are small-sized in terms of farmland, but a variety of situations exist. The absolute highest number of small farms is to be found in Romania, where nine in every ten farms are smaller than 5 ha (and most of them consume more than half of the final production within the household). A larger presence of middle sized farms is found in northern and central EU countries, and there is a significant presence of larger farms in France, where four in every ten farms have at least 50 ha of farmland (see Figure 3).