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Poland, Romania, Italy, Spain, France and Germany have the largest labour forces working in agriculture. A complete agricultural census takes place in Europe every ten years. The latest agricultural census, carried out in 2010, showed that 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.
Therefore, the number of persons is usually converted into Annual Work Units (AWU), which are equivalent to
full-time employment. In 2010, the total farm labour force in the EU27 was 9.7 million AWU, of which 7.5 million
AWU or 77% were the family labour force, 1.4 million AWU or 15% the regular non-family labour force and 0.8
million AWU or 8% the non-regular, non-family labour force.
Among the Member States, Poland (1.9 million AWU) had the largest total farm labour force, followed by Romania (1.6 million), Italy (1.0 million), Spain (0.9 million), France (0.8 million) and Germany (0.5 million). Together these six Member States accounted for nearly 70% of the total farm labour force in AWU in the EU27. The largest proportions of family farm labour force were observed in Poland (95% of the total), Ireland (92%) and Malta (90%), the highest shares of regular non-family labour force in the Czech Republic (75%), Slovakia (69%),
France and Estonia (both 45%), and of non-regular non-family labour force in Spain (19%), the Netherlands
(13%) and Italy (12%).
Tuesday December 18, 2012/ Eurostat/ European Union
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
