Photo: BMLFUW/Rita Newman
Small-structured farm-based agriculture
On average, an Austrian farm has only 19 hectares of agriculturally utilised area. This area is largely managed by farm families.
With small- and medium-size farms, agriculture in Austria is typically small- and medium-structured. The majority of holdings, i.e. 113,000 or 60 percent, cultivates an area that measures less than 20 hectares all in all. Austria counted a total of 189,600 farms in its agricultural structure survey of 2005.The Federal Provinces with most agricultural enterprises (46,000) and the largest agriculturally used area is Lower Austria, followed by Styria (43,000) and Upper Austria (36,000).
Of the total number of 189,600 agricultural and forestry enterprises only 39.3 percent are still full-time farms, 56.4 are part-time farms and 4.4 percent are run by legal persons.
An Austrian farm has on average only 35 hectares of cultivated area (utilised agricultural and forestry area), of which 19 hectares utilised agricultural area. The average number of animals kept is comparatively low.
In 2006, Austria had 20,162 organic farms with an agriculturally utilised area of approximately 361,000 hectares; this accounts for approximately 15 percent of the total agriculturally utilised area (not including alpine pastures) and means that more than 10 percent of all Austrian agricultural and forestry enterprises are organic farms. With these figures, Austria holds a top position in the European Union.
In 2006, totally 71,000 holdings were designated mountain farms according to the mountain farm cadastre groups 1 to - 4. The average agricultural area of a mountain farm is only 13.5 hectares.
The share of agriculture & forestry and fishery in the national economy's gross value added amounted to 1.7 per cent in 2006.
The total value of the agricultural and forestry production amounted to 7.13 billion euro in 2006. Of this figure, the production value of Austrian agriculture was approx. 5.68 billion euro (79.9 percent), of which 2.395 billion euro from plant production and 2.784 billion euro from animal production. The production value of forestry amounted to about 1.45 billion euro (20.3 percent) in 2006.
In 2006, totally about 3.5 million gainfully employed persons in Austria managed 80 percent of the Austrian federal territory. 180,500 of them worked in agriculture and forestry. These are approximately 5.1 percent of all gainfully employed persons. Of the persons active in agriculture and forestry, 149,000 were unpaid (family) workers and over 31,000 were paid workers. These figures prove the importance of farm families for the maintenance of farms.
Distribution of crop types
Around 7.5 million hectares are managed by agricultural and forestry holdings. 6.5 million hectares thereof are various agricultural and forestry areas, 0.9 million hectares account for other areas.
The entire agriculturally utilised area comprises about 3.3 million hectares, the agriculturally utilised area, not including alpine pastures and mountain meadows, totals 2.5 million hectares. The greater part of the agriculturally used area is permanent grassland (approx. 1.8 million hectares) and arable land (1.4 million hectares), which is located above all in extra-alpine areas in the east of Austria. Smaller areas are vineyards, orchards, house gardens, and fruit and vegetable gardens as well as vine and tree nurseries.
With some 1.8 million hectares, permanent grassland prevails in the alpine area. The regional distribution of crop types differs widely. Grassland management involves low cattle stocking rates and a very low rate of mineral fertiliser and herbicide use. Grassland in Austria is cultivated organically and adapted to the site-specific conditions in an exemplary manner.
The species diversity on Austrian meadows and pastures ranges on average at 30 to 50 different species of grasses, herbages and legumes. This great species diversity is reflected in the high quality of the Austrian raw milk.
The area used for forestry totals 3.31 million hectares, of which the major part is forest (3.30 million hectares). Smaller areas are Christmas tree plantations, wood energy areas and forest gardens.
Genetic engineering and agriculture
Our way of dealing with genetic engineering is of key importance to Austrian agriculture. In Austria, farmers, but also consumers are doubtful about genetic engineering.
22.08.2008, Lebensministerium Öffentlichkeitsarbeit