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The Agricultural census 2010 surveyed close to 12 million farms in the EU-27. These farms covered around 170 million hectares (1.7 million km2) of UAA. This means that the UAA occupied slightly over 40 % of the EU-27 territory. The total number of livestock in EU-27 in 2010 was 134 million livestock units. The farm work in the agricultural holdings added up to 9.7 AWU in the EU-27 countries, which corresponds to 9.7 million people working full time.
The holdings from Romania (32 %) and Italy (14 %) made up for 46 % of the total number of the EU-27 holdings. Of the total EU-27 holdings 49 % had less than 2 hectares. There were 325 thousand holdings (3 %) with a UAA of at least 100 hectares.The distribution of the utilised agricultural area was not homogeneous within the UAA size classes. 49 % of the EU-27 smaller farms had less than 2 hectares and represented 2 % of the total UAA. 3 % of the largest farms (with at least 100 hectares) had 50 % of the share of the total EU-27 UAA.
The results of the FSS 2010 show that a quarter of the farms were specialists in field crops which includes cereals, industrial crops, and vegetables. 20 % of the EU-27 farms specialized in permanent crops and in third place, with 15 %, were the farms which concentrate their activity on grazing livestock.
Almost half (48 %) of the livestock units surveyed in EU-27 holdings were cattle. Pigs came in second with 27.4 %, followed by poultry with 14 % share of the EU-27 livestock units. In the FSS 2010, 47 % of the EU-27 cattle (in livestock units) were in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Denmark stands out as having the largest percentage of pigs (71 %) in total LSU. Hungary holds the highest share of poultry which is close to 40 % of the country's livestock.
September 2012/ Eurostat/European Union.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
