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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the total number of farms in England in each of the last five years.

Statistical estimates of the number of commercial agricultural holdings in England in each of the last five years are shown in the table below.

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.

(a) 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, it was not possible to update the survey population and figures for 2020 are less robust and should be treated with caution.