Number of Farms in France: 349,600 in Mainland France in 2023

How many farms, depending on your question?#

The right answer depends on your question. To size a market, the benchmark is 349,600. For equipment, consulting or software aimed at farms that invest, it is the 182,650 medium and large farms. To build a call list, start with the register, but a list drawn from activity codes alone contains almost 2 rows for every 1 farm counted in the census.

Three steps for businesses that sell to farms. Start with size rather than activity code: 90,711 large farms generate 69.8% of output, and 182,650 medium and large farms form the core equipment market (see size). Choose the right way in: there are no chains or franchises, but more than three quarters of farmers belong to a cooperative (La Coopération Agricole; see the operators). Clean the list before calling: barely 1 location in 4 in the register shows a sign of activity, and 11.8% have a phone number, website or email address in the public listings we link (see the prospect list).

A note on the populations counted: Agreste counts farms, the register counts business locations, and the MSA counts people. The percentages at each level state their denominator; they cannot be mixed.

Why does the number of farms vary by source?#

Published agricultural figures count different things. The first difference is the unit: a farm, a registered business location identified by a SIRET number (the French ID of a business location), or a farm operator (a person). The next differences are the date and coverage: with or without micro-farms, mainland France alone or including overseas territories.

Take a simple example. A GAEC (a farming partnership) with two partners farming land in two municipalities is one farm for Agreste, one or more registered business locations depending on the places declared, and two operators for the MSA. All three counts are valid; they answer different questions.

There is no single "right figure" that invalidates the others. 349,600 answers "how many farms do official statistics count?" 406,156 answers "how many people run a farm or agricultural business?" 669,009 answers "how many agricultural location numbers are open in the register?" These figures cannot be added or averaged.

Why 349,600, 389,779 and 416,436 do not contradict each other#

The first gap is the date. The census is a snapshot of 2020. The Farm Structure Survey measures 2023, three years later.

The second gap is the scope. The 416,436 figure says "France": it covers mainland France and the overseas departments, or 389,779 and 26,657 farms. Agreste's 2023 figure covers mainland France alone; for the overseas territories, the same survey counts 23,530 farms, including 5,878 in La Réunion according to the island's regional agriculture office.

The third gap is the coverage. The 389,779 farms exclude "collective structures," the bodies that manage shared grazing land, mostly summer mountain pastures. Agreste also reports correcting the 2020 count in some of its comparison tables with 2023, excluding micro-farms; the total of 389,779 is not affected.

When does a farm count as a farm holding?#

The census does not count every farm. It applies minimum thresholds. A farm enters the count if it reaches one of them:

• 1 hectare of utilized agricultural area (land under crops or grassland);
• 20 ares (an are is one hundredth of a hectare) of specialized crops;
• a minimum number of animals, for example 1 cow or 6 breeding ewes.

Each farm is counted only once, at its headquarters, and must be managed independently. Sirene registration or an application ID for Common Agricultural Policy subsidies is taken as evidence of that independence. Sirene therefore provides an indicator for the census. It does not replace it.

Counting business locations is not counting farms#

A count by activity code, or NAF code (the French activity classification code, also called APE code), does not give the number of farms. It gives a number of business locations, which is something else.

The unit differs: the register lists business locations, each with its SIRET, the fourteen-digit ID of a business location; the census counts one farm per headquarters. The thresholds differ: a filter by activity code applies no size threshold. The date matters just as much: the register changes from one edition to the next, while the census freezes the year 2020. A register count is therefore cited with its edition, as the Observatory does for the number of car repair shops in France.

In practice: for anyone preparing a quote or a list, a count by NAF code is an upper limit on rows, not a number of customers.

How many farms has French agriculture lost since 1970?#

For French agriculture, the published benchmarks for mainland France show a steady decline:

• 1970: 1,587,600 farms;
• 2010: 490,000;
• 2020: nearly 390,000;
• 2023: 349,600.

The first three dates come from agricultural censuses, compiled by Insee. The last comes from the Farm Structure Survey. The series therefore mixes two methods.

The pace of the decline is not constant. Insee measures a drop of 3.5% a year between 1988 and 2000, then 2.3% a year between 2010 and 2020. Agreste reports 3.6% a year since 2020: the decline has picked up speed. Subtracting the two mainland figures gives a decline of about 40,200 farms between 2020 and 2023.

For suppliers, the decline does not affect every farm size equally. Micro-farms are declining by 9.4% a year, the others by 1.7% a year. Large farms are holding steady: 91,959 in 2010, 92,214 in 2020, 90,711 in 2023. The market is mostly losing very small farms: 26,100 of the 40,200 farms lost between 2020 and 2023 were micro-farms; small and medium farms declined by about 7% and 6% over three years.

The decline also affects livestock farms more than crop farms: 2.8% a year for farms specializing in animal production between 2020 and 2023, compared with 0.8% for farms specializing in crop production. Only one specialty is growing, vegetable farming and horticulture, with 300 more farms a year.

The farms that remain are larger. Agreste measures an average size of 93 hectares in 2023, compared with 89 hectares in 2020, excluding micro-farms. Across all 349,600 farms, the average is 76 hectares. Looking ahead, Insee calculated 342,500 farms in 2025 and 274,600 in 2035 if trends continue: these are projections, not counts.

The register does not show this decline: it removes a location only when its closure is reported, and keeps numbers that the census does not count (openings and closures below).

How much revenue does agriculture generate?#

Official statistics give a figure for the entire sector. Insee estimates agricultural output at €93.8 billion in 2025, excluding subsidies, up 4.7% in value. Agreste measures economic size differently: standard output (PBS), calculated using standard rates rather than actual sales, reaches €70.1 billion for mainland farms in 2023. On the supplier side, France's new farm machinery market is worth €7.3 billion in 2025, according to the trade association Axema.

A farm's earnings can be found in Agreste's Farm Accountancy Data Network (RICA). Average current income before tax, meaning what the farm has left before tax, is €40,210 per farm in 2024. In 2024, the survey represented 290,311 farms in mainland France and three overseas departments, excluding micro-farms.

In 2024, the gap between specialties was even greater: €124,500 for pig farms and €68,930 for dairy cattle farms, compared with €3,170 for cereal farms. For a seller of equipment, inputs or financial services, this changes customers' ability to pay from year to year far more than the farm count alone.

What we measure#

Few farms publish their accounts: only 1,563 farming companies, fewer than 1 in 100, publish recent revenue, and they are mostly seed and genetics producers. Sole proprietors are not required to publish accounts. To estimate a farm's spending capacity, Agreste's current income figure above is the right benchmark.

Which NAF code applies to a farm?#

The NAF code (or APE code) is the main activity code assigned by Insee to each location. For a farm, it ranges from 01.11Z (cereals, legumes, oilseeds) to 01.50Z (mixed farming), including grape growing (01.21Z), dairy cattle (01.41Z) and poultry (01.47Z). As of October 1, 2026, 669,009 open locations in mainland France have one of these codes.

Division 01 also includes codes that do not describe farms: agricultural services (01.61Z to 01.64Z), meaning agricultural contractors, livestock support or seed processing, and hunting (01.70Z). Its official title is "Culture et production animale, chasse et services annexes" (crop and animal production, hunting and related services).

An activity code does not establish what a business actually does. 80,367 locations have code 01.49Z, "other animals" (beekeeping, snails, dog and cat breeding), and only 1.4% of them report having employees. By comparison, 38.5% of pig farming locations do. For a list, the code helps select a segment; legal form, employees and signs of activity help verify it (see specialty).

Market terms in plain English#

Industry terms have different meanings depending on who uses them.

Seven levels for analyzing the market#

To keep the populations separate, the study works through seven levels, from the register to the region. Each table states its population: Agreste's farms (349,623, rounded to 349,600, or 273,424 excluding micro-farms) or registered business locations. When a register table counts fewer than 669,009, a line explains why.

Level 1. The universe: 746,977 farming locations in the register#

The register counts 746,977 open locations classified in agriculture (division 01 of the classification), across all of France: those that grow crops or raise livestock, those that provide services to farms and those that hunt. Each row is a business location; "open" means registered and not closed, nothing more.

Cooperatives are counted separately: by legal form, across all activities, rather than by a division 01 code.

In practice: for businesses that sell to farms, level 1 provides an upper limit and a starting point for a list; it says nothing about actual activity. Cooperatives are counted in addition.

Level 2. Actual farms: from the register to 349,600#

The register does not say how many farms exist. Agreste does, for mainland France: 349,600. Legal form connects the two counts, because the gap is not spread evenly.

For EARL and GAEC, the register and Agreste give almost the same number. For sole proprietors, the register counts 278,077 more, 2.45 times Agreste's count. A sole proprietor under an agricultural code may have stopped farming without closing their registration, be retired or remain below the census thresholds: 39% of these registrations date from before 2000.

We measured what lies behind these rows. Among 2,500 locations picked at random (1,500 sole proprietors and 1,000 companies), we look for a sign of activity: a public business listing linked to the same place (excluding legal notices), even with no content, or reported employees. 9.8% of sole-proprietor locations show one, compared with 58.5% of company locations. Applied to the 657,429 locations in these two groups, this gives about 154,100 locations (23.4%), including about 46,400 sole-proprietor and 107,800 company locations (rounded to the nearest hundred); the 11,580 others (joint ownerships, associations, public bodies) were not sampled.

This figure is a minimum, not a farm count: a farm may be active without a public listing or employees. It is therefore lower than Agreste's 349,600, and mainly tells us how many rows in a raw list show a sign of ongoing activity.

We also checked the classification: one hundred locations picked at random were read twice, independently, by Scalon, and the two readings agreed on all 100. The evidence contradicted the activity classification in only 2 of the 100 records; in 56 records, no information beyond the code itself allowed us to verify it (details in the method).

Level 3. Who signs: legal form#

Agreste classifies farms by legal form. A little over half of farms (54.8%) are run by a sole proprietor, and 45.2% by a company.

Companies account for an even larger share of operators: the MSA reports that 61.8% of farm or agricultural business operators work through a company in 2025.

In the register, legal form also indicates whether a location has employees, and therefore buys as an employer.

In practice, 4.4% of sole proprietors have employees, compared with about 4 in 10 companies and half of SARL and SAS companies. A payroll software vendor or provider of employee insurance therefore targets companies, while an equipment or seed supplier targets all legal forms.

A farming company often has several managers. The register names 333,350 managers, with their year of birth, for 184,726 farming businesses, almost all of them companies; 53% of these businesses have two or more. Businesses selling to a company therefore often have several decision-makers to convince.

Level 4. Size: a quarter of farms generate 70% of output#

Agreste classifies farms by economic size, based on their standard output. Each size category contains roughly a quarter of farms, but carries a very different weight.

The 90,711 large farms, a quarter of the total, therefore generate 69.8% of output and hold 48.7% of the land. The 76,199 micro-farms, more than one in five, generate just 1.1%. The 182,650 medium and large farms, or 52.2% of the total, are the ones that invest, hire and buy inputs on a business scale.

Land follows the same pattern. Average utilized agricultural area is 76 hectares across all farms and 93 hectares excluding micro-farms. Excluding micro-farms, about 1 farm in 10 has 200 hectares or more, and these farms alone hold a third of the land.

Agreste counts 164,000 permanent non-family employees on farms, excluding micro-farms. The MSA counts nearly 192,000 employer locations in the agricultural social security system in 2024, including more than 140,000 in crops and livestock. In the register, 14.4% of crop and livestock locations report having employees (see level 3).

In practice: for a machinery dealer, animal feed supplier or business software vendor, the 182,650 medium and large farms are a market for account-based sales; the 76,199 micro-farms are a high-volume market with low spending per customer, often run by older farmers (56 years old on average, compared with 49 excluding micro-farms).

Level 5. Specialty#

Specialty (farm type, OTEX) identifies each supplier's customers: sellers of seeds, milking equipment and veterinary products target different farms.

For farms excluding micro-farms, Agreste publishes the exact count by type.

Adding the 76,199 micro-farms from level 4 gives the total of 349,623 farms.

The register classifies locations by activity code, which is more detailed but less reliable. Here are the top 15 codes.

The counts in this table come from the September 24, 2026 snapshot; as of October 1, grape growing has 116,091 locations, as in our study of winegrowers.

The register has more rows than there are farms in every specialty, but the gap varies. It counts 116,091 grape-growing locations as of October 1, compared with Agreste's 53,000 winegrowing farms; the corresponding dairy cattle figures are 48,929 and 32,000. Codes where employees are common (pigs 38.5%, mixed farming 25.0%, dairy cattle 24.1%) are markets for suppliers selling to employers; codes with almost no employees (other animals 1.4%, aromatic plants 3.1%) describe small-scale activities.

Two other specialty benchmarks: 61,159 farms are engaged in organic farming in 2025, or 17.3% of the country's farms according to Agence Bio (France's organic farming agency), using its own population; and 23% of farms sell through short supply chains in 2020 (90,024 farms), according to the census.

Level 6. Chains, cooperatives, groups: market structure#

In B2B terms, an independent farm is outside any chain, franchise, shared brand or group. In agriculture, there are no chains or franchises: the cooperative is the group that matters, with most farmers belonging to one to sell their output or buy their inputs.

In practice: for businesses that sell to farms, the real question is not "chain or independent," but "directly or through the cooperative." The cooperative buys supplies, collects farm products and provides advice for thousands of members; the farm operator alone still decides on machinery, banking or software.

Above the farms, parent companies own farming companies. We find 1,402, owning 1,743 farming companies (2,081 locations); 201 of these parents own two or more. The leaders come from wine, poultry and animal genetics: Dionysos (12 winegrowing companies), Financière Chaudenay (12), Vignobles de Terroirs (10), Les Fermes Larrère (9), BD France, hatcheries (7), Figomo, part of the Orvia group (7), Hendrix Genetics (4 companies, 16 locations) and Terrena (4). For a supplier, a parent company is a single contact making decisions for several farms; they remain rare: 1,402 parents for 190,702 companies and other legal entities.

The major cooperative groups#

Together, cooperatives account for €116 billion in consolidated revenue and 200,000 employees (subsidiaries included), and 93% are micro, small or medium enterprises, according to La Coopération Agricole. The register lists 2,449 active ones (2,183 agricultural cooperatives and 266 unions), plus 200 SICA.

Cuma have 182,000 members; those in the FNCUMA network generate €693 million in revenue.

These figures cannot be added: membership overlaps (InVivo is a union of cooperatives), and fiscal years differ. In practice: sales go to each farm, or through its cooperative. For inputs, feed or services, the cooperative is often the gateway to thousands of members; for machinery, consulting or banking services, the farm operator decides.

Level 7. Where are the farms?#

Nouvelle-Aquitaine has the most farms (56,551, or 16.2%), ahead of Occitanie (55,813) and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (43,894). The top four regions account for 194,553 farms, or 55.6% of the total.

Percentages are rounded: they do not always add up to exactly 100%.

The ratio between the register and Agreste shows where the extra rows lie. Île-de-France has 2.61 register locations for every 1 farm, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur 2.41, Occitanie 2.14; Bretagne has only 1.61. In Occitanie, 79.5% of locations belong to sole proprietors, compared with 60.0% in Pays de la Loire. Where the register counts many sole proprietors, a raw list contains many rows with no farm behind them.

By department, the register puts Marne first (25,762 locations, with the Champagne vineyards), ahead of Hérault (19,319) and Manche (14,575). All 96 departments are in the following table.

In practice: for businesses that sell to farms, volume tells you how many accounts to visit, while the ratio between the register and Agreste tells you how many rows in the list need checking. Every region lost farms between 2020 and 2023, from 2,936 to 2,620 in Corse and from 64,370 to 55,813 in Occitanie: the market is shrinking in every region.

Is the market changing? New farmers, departures and age#

A count is a snapshot at a given date. Yet farmers continue to enter and leave the market. According to the MSA, there were 406,156 farm or agricultural business operators in 2025, down 1.6% over a year. In 2025, 18,596 people became operators and 25,206 left, a replacement rate of 73.8% and a net loss of 6,610 operators. In 2024, 12,661 people began operating a farm or agricultural business, 960 fewer than in 2023 (-7%).

In the register, 25,100 crop or livestock locations were created in 2025 and 21,664 closed, overseas territories included. Registering a business location is not the same as starting to operate a farm or agricultural business: the MSA counts 13,621 new self-employed agricultural operators in 2023. Since November 2023, 62,649 locations have been created in mainland France, 9% of those open.

Age indicates the pace of succession. Half of farming company managers are 52 or older, and 43% are 55 or older. In 29,855 businesses, or 1 in 6, every manager is 60 or older: a handover is near. Agreste gives a similar signal, for a different population, among operators excluding micro-farms: 19.5% are 60 or older, 31.5% are 55 or older, and 24.0% are under 40. The average age is 49, excluding micro-farms.

For a seller of equipment, succession advice, insurance or financing, this is a useful benchmark: farms whose managers are approaching retirement are accounts that will change hands, and new farmers are new customers to equip.

Agriculture's submarkets#

Each submarket has its suppliers and decision-makers. Here is their size, in farms (Agreste) and in the register. The rows cannot be compared directly: the register counts business locations and uses different codes from Agreste's farm types.

How do you use these figures for market research?#

Size an addressable market#

Start with the customers your product or service targets (see the "How many farms, depending on your question?" table). Farm machinery targets the 182,650 medium and large farms. Animal feed targets livestock farms by type: 32,000 dairy cattle farms, 42,000 beef cattle farms, 16,000 pig and poultry farms. A bank or insurer targets the 349,600 farms and 406,156 operators. A business management or payroll software vendor targets companies first, because nearly 4 EARL, SCEA or GAEC in 10 and half of SARL and SAS report having employees.

Segment, choose a territory, track the market. Combine size, specialty, legal form and region, and use the same population throughout: Agreste to size the market, the register to build the list. By territory, compare volume and the share of register entries that actually represent farms: a department with a high share of sole proprietors needs more filtering. Record the date of each analysis and repeat it annually: Farm Structure Survey results and MSA figures are published annually, while the register changes every month.

How do you build a farm prospect list?#

A useful list does not start with the register's activity code alone. Start with the customers your product or service targets, then filter by legal form (companies first), reported employees and signs of activity. This filter takes you from 669,009 rows to about 154,100 locations showing a sign of activity, a minimum, compared with 349,600 farms counted by Agreste. The prospect list guide details the method starting from the Sirene register.

The list must then identify whom to contact. For a company, the register names the managers: they are the decision-makers. For a sole proprietor, it is the farmer. For a cooperative, it is the purchasing department or management. Each row therefore gives the legal form, number of managers and any group affiliation.

Contact availability remains an issue, and our listings provide few details. 78,875 of the 668,382 locations (11.8%) have a phone number, website or email address in the public listings we link: 78,081 a phone number (11.7%), 22,384 a website (3.3%) and 5,373 an email address (0.8%). These are minimums. List vendors give a similar order of magnitude for email: 11,018 and 18,343 email addresses from two vendors, for 629,232 mailing addresses. For phone numbers, one advertises 277,851 landlines and 35,834 mobile numbers, more than our 78,081: our linked public listings provide a minimum, and the source of their numbers is not published. Email is rare everywhere; mailing addresses and phone numbers matter more.

In practice: a farm prospect list is built around addresses and managers' names, supplemented by phone numbers when available, and updated annually, since 9% of open locations are less than three years old.

Frequently asked questions#

How many farms are there in France in 2025 or 2026?#

No count has been published for 2025 or 2026. The latest is for 2023: 349,600 farms in mainland France (Agreste). Insee projected 342,500 for 2025, based on the past trend.

How many farmers are there in France?#

The MSA counts 406,156 farm or agricultural business operators in 2025. Agreste counts 444,562 people running farms, either alone or jointly, in 2023, including micro-farms. The two figures cover different things.

How many large farms are there?#

In 2023, 90,711 mainland farms were classified as large (standard output of €250,000 or more). They account for 25.9% of farms and 69.8% of output.

Why does the register count almost twice as many as official statistics?#

Because it counts business locations with no minimum size, and it lists 2.45 times as many sole proprietors as official statistics do: 469,677 in the register compared with 191,600 reported by Agreste. Companies are much closer (1.21 times as numerous).

How much revenue does a farm generate?#

None of the sources we use publishes average revenue. Average current income before tax is €40,210 per farm in 2024 (RICA, excluding micro-farms), ranging from €13,960 for a small farm to €87,140 for a large one. Only 1,563 farming companies publish recent revenue.

How many farms have employees?#

Agreste counts about 90,000 farms employing at least one permanent employee in 2023, or 32.9% of farms excluding micro-farms (273,400). In the register, 14.4% of crop and livestock locations report having employees.

Method#

Farm counts come from Agreste: the 2023 Farm Structure Survey (Primeur and Chiffres et données of June 2025, Mémento 2025 of January 2026) and the 2020 agricultural census. Farm operator and new farmer figures come from the MSA, output from Insee, cooperative figures from La Coopération Agricole and FNCUMA, and organic farming figures from Agence Bio. Business location counts come from the October 1, 2026 snapshot of the Sirene register, assembled in the Scalon graph and reviewed on November 2 and 9, 2026. Agreste does not publish its list of farms (statistical confidentiality) and the MSA does not publish its list of contributors: no public file allows farms to be matched one by one with the register.

Key takeaways#

Mainland France had 349,600 farms in 2023, compared with 669,009 rows in the register: an activity code alone cannot tell you the size of an agricultural market. A quarter of farms, the large ones, generate 69.8% of output.

The market has no chains or franchises; farmers organize through cooperatives, and most sales are made to individual farms or through their cooperatives.

For a study or a list, define your target customers before choosing a figure, use the same population throughout, and record the date of each analysis.

Cite this study#

Sources#

• L'agrandissement des exploitations se poursuit depuis 2020, Agreste Primeur n° 2, juin 2025 (version révisée)
• Enquête sur la structure des exploitations agricoles en 2023, Agreste Chiffres et données n° 2025-11, juin 2025
• Tableaux de l'enquête Structure 2023, Agreste
• Mémento 2025, Agreste, janvier 2026
• Mémento 2023, Agreste, avril 2024 (2020 agricultural census: 389,779 in mainland France, 26,657 in the overseas departments)
• Évolution du nombre d'exploitations, VizAgreste (416,436 farms in France in 2020)
• Portrait des exploitations agricoles en Hauts-de-France, Agreste, DRAAF Hauts-de-France
• Enquête sur les structures des exploitations agricoles en 2023, Agreste Études n° 4, DAAF de La Réunion, juillet 2025
• Résultats du réseau d'information comptable agricole (RICA) 2024, Agreste Chiffres et données, 2026
• Résultats économiques agricoles en retrait en 2024, Agreste Primeur n° 6, 2025
• Circuits courts, recensement agricole 2020, Agreste Primeur n° 2023-5, mars 2023
• Nombre d'exploitations, Transformations de l'agriculture et des consommations alimentaires, Insee, 27 février 2024
• Projection du nombre d'exploitations, Insee, 27 février 2024
• Comptes de l'agriculture en 2025, Insee
• Chiffres utiles 2026, MSA, juin 2026
• Chiffres utiles, édition nationale 2025, MSA, juin 2025
• Les installations en 2024, MSA, février 2026
• Chiffres clés 2025, La Coopération Agricole
• Chiffres clés des Cuma 2025, FNCUMA
• Observatoire de la production bio, Agence Bio, chiffres 2025
• Rapport économique 2026, les chiffres clés, Axema
• Reports and press releases from the cooperative groups cited in level 6: links in the table.
• Base Sirene des entreprises et de leurs établissements, Insee, data.gouv.fr
• Définition de l'établissement, Insee
• Online register counters for division 01 and list vendors' offerings (mailing addresses, emails), reviewed November 3 through 9, 2026.
• Sirene register (Insee), public business listings and registre national des entreprises: reviewed in the Scalon graph on November 2 and 9, 2026.