Photo: Thomas Høyrup Christensen / Visitdenmark

Status and trends in food systems

Structural changes related to scale of operations

We cannot fully understand the declining interest of young people in careers in food systems without considering structural issues, including the size of the unit (e.g. farm size). While the growing total factor productivity in agriculture is sometimes seen as a driver of the wider industrial revolution,

Maddison and Rehdanz 2019.

an alternative perspective suggests that agriculture has historically responded to urban and industrial development rather than playing a role in shaping it.

Kopsidis and Wolf 2012.

The long-term reduction in the number of farms and increase in farm size

OECD 2023a.

could be seen as one of the responses to the industrial revolution. However, this structural change takes varying forms worldwide and significant differences can be observed across European countries. According to Eurostat data from 2020, Romania accounted for 31.8% of all agricultural holdings in the European Union. Most of these holdings were very small, with 90.3% measuring less than 5 hectares. Larger farms (of 50 hectares or more) were much more common in France (46.0%), Finland (33.3%), Germany (31.5%) and Denmark (30.9%),

“Farms and Farmland in the European Union – Statistics” 2022.

where they also represent a proportionally higher share of the total farmland. Accordingly, these structural differences should be taken into account when presenting data at EU level on parameters such as farmer demographics and other relevant categories.

Most regions in the Nordic Region have experienced a decrease in the number of farms (see Figure 1). However, the Stockholm region in Sweden has shown a slight increase and some municipalities in Finland have seen a notable rise in the number of farms.

A map of countries/regions with different colored areas

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Figure 1: Change in number of farms from 2003 to 2023. Source: Nordregio calculations based on NSIs.

Farm size plays a critical role in the phenomenon of land abandonment, with smaller and fragmented farms being particularly vulnerable. While external factors such as population migration and economic changes often trigger abandonment, internal factors like farm size, resource availability and management ability determine the trajectory of development.

Ortyl, Kasprzyk and Jadczyszyn 2024.

Nonetheless, smaller farms can make important contributions to local food supply, food security and rural sustainability.

Galli et al. 2020.

Guiomar et al. 2018.

Challenges such as climate change and resource depletion highlight the value of small-scale agriculture, which often preserves local knowledge and sustainable practices, especially in regions less influenced by industrial agriculture.

Šūmane et al. 2018.

Figure 2: Average farm size in four of the Nordic countries in 2010 and 2024. Source: Nordregio calculations based on NSIs.

All the Nordic countries have undergone continuous structural changes, with farms becoming fewer in number and larger in size. Denmark has the largest farms in the Nordic Region, while Norway has the smallest (see Figure 2).

Farm size also influences labour supply and demand within food systems. Traditionally, most farms relied on family labour as the primary workforce, supplemented by hired workers. However, structural and technological changes have increased the demand for hired labour and contractors. In addition, an OECD study shows an increase in the proportion of temporary and seasonal workers in the agricultural labour force and a sharp increase in the number of migrant workers.

OECD 2023a.

A comparison of Nordic countries reveals similar trends, with employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors remaining steady at 2-3% of the workforce (see Figure 3). However, due to the outsourcing of some functions to contractors, the share of family labour likely represents an even smaller share of the total workforce than suggested by the statistics. The extensive use of contractors reinforces the geographic concentration of farming, as contracting tends to be most profitable in regions with a high density of large farms.

Figure 3: Share of employees employed in food, forestry and fishing from 2015 to 2023 (Eurostat).