English farm statistics: challenges, farm types and regions

Factors including supply chain issues, extreme weather events and the war in Ukraine have led to price increases that affect farmers’ input costs but also the value of their outputs.

In parallel, farmers need to adapt to new farm funding arrangements after the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU). This paper focuses on farm funding in England only, as agriculture is devolved and the new approaches in the other parts of the UK are still being developed. 

Agricultural support in England is moving away from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) focus on direct payments, largely based on the area of land farmed, towards a new focus on providing public goods, such as environmental and animal health improvements.

Defra data reported in this paper shows that Direct Payments still made up the largest part of all subsidies (72.1%) in 2021-22. New schemes are expected to become increasingly important in coming years.

This paper presents data on farms by type: cereals farms, general cropping farms; specialist pig and poultry farms; dairy farms; grazing livestock farms; and horticulture, mixed and other farms.

This paper also presents data on farms by region: England; East Midlands; Eastern; North East; North West; South East; South West; West Midlands; Yorkshire & the Humber.