June census shows rise in agricultural land area

This year’s June census shows the area in agricultural production in England increased by 0.7% to just over 8.9m hectares, mainly through increases in crop and temporary grassland areas.

The total area of crops increased by 1.9% in 2012 to slightly more than 4m hectares, prompted mainly by high prices for cereals and oilseed rape, where areas rose at the expense of field beans, dry peas and linseed.

Cereal acreage rose 2.3% to 2.6m hectares, with wheat, barley and oats all increasing. The oilseed area reached a record high of 742,000ha, a 7.9% increase mainly through the rise in oilseed rape area to 713,000ha.

However, the horticultural crop area fell 2.3% to 149,000ha.

Permanent pasture (grass more than five years old, not including sole-right rough grazing) shows a decrease of 1.0% from 2011 to 3.2m hectares.

Cattle and calf numbers in England fell 0.8% between 2011 and 2012 to just under 5.4m head, with the beef and dairy herds falling by 2.2% and 0.7% respectively.

Pig numbers increased by 1.7% to almost 3.7 million, although the pig breeding herd saw a small drop to 351,000 head, while fattening pig numbers rose by 1.8% to more than 3.2 million. This represents a 23% fall in just 10 years.

Sheep numbers rose by 2.0% from 14.3 million in 2011 to 14.6 million in 2012.

The results are based on 20,000 responses from 30,000 commercial farming businesses.