The income gap between the biggest and smallest farms in Europe has doubled in the past 15 years and hit record levels at the same time as the number

Revealed: the growing income gap between Europe’s biggest and smallest farms

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2024-11-08 21:30:04

The income gap between the biggest and smallest farms in Europe has doubled in the past 15 years and hit record levels at the same time as the number of small farms has collapsed, a Guardian analysis of agricultural income data has found.

Figures from the European Commission’s Farming Accountancy Data Network (FADN) and Eurostat suggest farmers across the continent raked in record profits when the war in Ukraine sent food prices soaring, boosting a long-running trend of rising average incomes that has outstripped inflation.

But big farms continue to reap the bulk of the rewards, while razor-thin margins on small farms have put some farmers through financial hell and forced others out of business.

The analysis comes as a radical new set of proposals to support struggling farmers and cut pollution has been put forward by a coalition of farmers, retailers and environmentalists, convened by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. The shared vision calls for urgent change, including an overhaul of controversial subsidies.

But it also comes as Europe shifts politically to the right, with some populist governments attacking environment rules and drawing significant support from depressed rural regions – where in many cases small farms have closed down or been bought up, and from which young people are moving to cities, leaving behind societies that the historian Geert Mak describes as “more traditional, conservative and anxious”.