Tike (the Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) has published the Farm Register information for 2008. Changes in the farm structure have trended in the same direction for several years - the number of farms has declined, the average farm size has grown and livestock farms account for a smaller share of all farms. Trends in the agricultural support areas vary by production sector. Within the production sectors, the greatest relative decline was seen in farms engaged in pig husbandry. The majority of the farms that discontinued pig husbandry changed over to cereals production. The statistical survey data is now available from the Matilda information service. The publication of the Farm Register will follow at the beginning of April.

There were a total of 65,802 farms in Finland in 2008, 1,100 less than in the previous year. The average arable area of the farms was 35 hectares, an increase of 0.6 hectares on the previous year. About 60 per cent of the farms had rented arable land. The average area of rented arable land was slightly over 19 hectares.

Structural changes by support area
Changes in the number of farms in all support areas have been aligned in terms of both level and direction in the 2000s. The number of farms in the whole of Finland has decreased by about 18 per cent since 2000. Between 2000 and 2008, the rate of decline in the number of farms in support areas A and B was about one percentage point faster than in support area C. The situation was still different in the 1990s, when the number of farms declined faster in support area C than in support areas A and B.

Examined by production sector, the differences between the support areas are substantially greater. The number of livestock farms - dairy farms in particular - has fallen significantly faster in support areas A and B than in support area C. The exception to this is poultry farms; their number declined faster in support area C than in support areas A and B.

Structural changes by production sector
The greatest relative decrease since the beginning of the millennium - more than 45 per cent - has been seen in the number of farms specialising in pig husbandry and milk production. However, the average herd size has increased in step with this decline; in 2008, dairy farms had, on average, 21.7 dairy cows and pig farms 235 pigs. The number of poultry farms has declined by about 38 per cent since the turn of the millennium, while the number of cereal farms, for instance, has grown by 4 per cent.

The greatest relative decrease between 2007 and 2008 was in the number of farms specialising in pig husbandry. All in all, 16 per cent of the farms that formerly specialised in pig husbandry either changed over to another production sector or discontinued agricultural production during the previous year. The majority of the former pig farms took up cereals production as their main production sector. Of the livestock farms, only the number of suckler cow farms increased compared to 2007.

Farming population
The number of farmers on farms owned by private individuals totalled 58,102 in 2008. The average age of farmers was 49.9 years; that is, the farming population was half a year older on average than in the previous year. The average age of men was 1.4 years higher than that of women.

Farms with a large arable area were usually farmed by relatively young people, while the oldest farmers, on average, were found on the smallest farms. Women accounted for about 10 per cent of farmers on farms owned by private individuals.

For additional information on the 2008 Farm Register, contact Actuary Irene Mustalahti, tel. +358 20 77 21 340 or
+358 40 775 0587, e-mail: forename.surname@mmmtike.fi.