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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the economic value of the agricultural sector to the economy; and how many jobs it provides.

In 2014 the contribution to the economy of UK agriculture, as measured by gross value added at basic price, was £9.2 billion.

The number of people employed on agricultural holdings in the UK on 1st June 2014 was 181,000. This includes salaried managers, regular and casual workers.

An additional 294,000 self-employed principal farmers also worked on agricultural holdings in the UK, giving a total of 476,000 or 1.43% of the total UK workforce.

Table 1: The number of people working on farms in the UK June 2014