Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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238. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of famers nationally by enterprise (details supplied) in tabular form. [12479/19]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The Farm Structure Survey (FSS) 2016, published by the Central Statistics Office, provides insights into the number of farms and farm demographic in Ireland. The FSS also covers animal numbers and crop areas, which is updated in annual CSO surveys.

In 2016, there were 137,500 farms in Ireland, of which 137,100 (99.7%) were classified as family farms. More than half of these were located in the Border, Midland and Western region. The average farm size in the state was 32.4 hectares. Farms located in the Southern and Eastern region were larger than those in the Border, Midland and West with an average farm size of 38.3 hectares compared to 27.1 hectares.

The farm types listed in the publication are broken down in the table. Organic farms are included in these figures as the CSO makes no differentiation between organic and non-organic farms in this report.

Specialist beef production was the most common farm type in 2016, accounting for over half of all farms. Specialist beef production was more common in the BMW region, where it accounted for 59.7% of all farms.

Over two thirds of specialist sheep farms were located in the Border, Midlands and Western region. The South East region contained almost 80% of specialist tillage farms and 77.2% of specialist dairy farms.