These are two audio files from Sophie Emerson, Statistician with the Agriculture Surveys Section of the CSO, to accompany the Farm Structure Survey 2023 release.
Media outlets have permission to use the clip as long as they credit the CSO.
Well looking at farm holders, the average age was just under 60 and more than 85% were male.
Just less than half of farm holders said that they had a succession plan in place, and of those who did, nearly all the planned successors were family members.
There has been a marked increase in organic farming, we saw that over 4,000 farms were either certified organic or undergoing conversion to organic in 2023, and there were more than half a million sheep on organic farms, accounting for almost 10% of the national flock.
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