Agricultural land use in farmers’ farms

Abstract

The article provides the distribution of agricultural land used by farmers’ farms, analyses the declared areas of agricultural land in use and cropland and the amounts of support received. The article also provides the analysis of the change in land used by the farmers’ farms in the period of 2003-2005, and indicates the prevailing specialisation of farms in Kaunas district. According to the analysis results, the number of farmers’ farms had decreased during the analysed period, and land area used by farmers had decreased as well. Even though in 2010 the average farm size increased to 11.19 ha, currently it is only about 7 ha. The majority of farms are from 1 to 10 ha (68.8 percent). In Kaunas district, there prevails combined specialisation of farmers’ farms as crop production might be combined with cattle-breeding, moreover, according to the data of 2015, there are 35 organic farms in the district. In Kaunas district, the areas of declared agricultural land in use and cropland increased by approximately 3.2 percent, however, the number of submitted applications decreased by 12.7 percent. Winter wheat and meadows-pastures (up to 5 years) are mostly declared. Although the grant amount to farmers is decreasing, the support to Kaunas district farmers is constantly increasing