FOI reference: FOI-2024-2398
You asked
- Please can you confirm how many UK farms are still family owned, and what percentage this makes up of total farm ownership?
- Please can you confirm how any farms are now held by non farmers, eg subsidiaries or associate businesses of multi companies, eg for instance Dyson who now owns significant portions of farm land within the UK? Is it possible to distinguish these please?
- How much tax do English and Welsh farmers contribute in all taxes per year, in the last two years please?
- Can you confirm how much of our food is now grown within the UK in the last two years?
- How many farmers/farms have been lost in the last ten years please?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We do not hold the requested data for questions 1, 2 and 4. The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) would be better placed to assist with these queries: defra.helpline@defra.gov.uk.
Regarding question 3, we do not hold tax information at the level of detail requested. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) may be better placed to assist with this part of your query: foi.request@hmrc.gov.uk.
For question 5, it is not possible to answer this question for farms/farmers specifically, but it is possible to provide an estimate of the number of businesses, classified to Agriculture, which have closed since the start of 2017. The estimate is obtained from the Quarterly Business Demography output published by ONS.
The list of industries classified to agriculture may be found here.
From the first quarter of 2017 until the third quarter of 2024, there were 35,315 business closures in agriculture. Over the same period there were 26,920 business births.