According to the latest EU Agricultural Economics Brief published by the European Commission the average farm size in the EU has increased by 3.8% in recent years and economic output has increased 5.2% per year between 2005 and 2010. In 2010 there were 12 million farms in the EU-27 encompassing 172 million hectares of land employing 25 million people and approximately 30% of farm managers were over 65 years of age. Approximately 70% of all farms in the EU work less than 5 hectares and only 2.7% have more than 100 hectares which are working 50% of total agricultural area. For countries that joined the EU in 2004 or 2007standard output per farm grew twice as much as older EU members. Five members – Slovakia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Estonia reported annual growth over 10% while two countries – Ireland and Cyprus reported negative growth rates of -3.1% and -2.7% respectively.
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