A new 'Pocketbook' of statistics released on Tuesday by EU statistics agency Eurostat reveals that the number of people employed in farming in Europe has risen. This will come as a relief as previous figures showed the trend in Europe has been for larger holdings and fewer farmers and workers in recent years.

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The Pocketbook, using data from agricultural censuses conducted every ten years, revealed Poland (1.9 million), Romania, Italy, Spain, Germany and agricultural powerhouse France have the largest labour forces working in agriculture in the bloc. Together these six states account for 70 percent of the EU's entire agricultural workforce. In Poland, Ireland and Malta, over 90 percent of the workforce are farming families.

The figures from 2010 reveal almost 23 million people were occupied on nearly 12 million farms in the EU27. They include farmers, members of farmers' families and the non-family labour force, who do not all work on a full-time basis. However, the estimated full-time farm labour force in the EU27 was 9.7 million Annual Work Units (AWU – a method of measuring for equivalence in full time labour).

Of these, 7.5 million AWU or 77 percent were the family labour force, 1.4 million AWU or 15 percent the regular non-family labour force and 0.8 million AWU or 8 percent neither family, nor regular workers. The figures represent a near-doubling of the agricultural workforce since the last assessment 2003; however, the trend for larger and fewer farms continues apace and since that time two new states have acceded to the EU.

Organic and income statistics

The largest number of organic farms in the bloc are located in Austria (13 percent of all organic holdings), the Czech Republic and Sweden. In 2010, there were around 156 000 organic farms in the EU27, or 1.3 percent of the total number of farms. However, these farms account for a much larger proportion of the farmed area, at 5 million hectares (or 2.9 percent of the utilised agricultural area).

Although figures show an overall increase in agricultural income across the EU 27, where, compared to 2005, the agricultural income per annual work unit rose by more than 10 percent in 2007, 2008 and 2010, but decreased by 1.5 percent in 2009, the overall figure hides significant fluctuations.

For 20 member states, including the UK, agricultural income in 2011 was above the level recorded for 2005, however, agricultural income in 2011 dropped below 2005 levels in Luxembourg, Malta, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus and Spain. In these countries, the fall ranged from 23.3 percent in Luxembourg, to 2.5 percent in Spain.

The pocketbook, available to download from Eurostat here, also contains information on drivers of agricultural income changes, agriculture and the environment, rural development and the Common Agricultural Policy – in recognition of the policy's 50 year anniversary this year.