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