The agricultural crops industry has 30,000 businesses and 143,000 employees. Think wheat in your bread, oats in your breakfast cereals, frozen bags of peas in your freezer, oilseed rape for your vegetable oil and in some cases bio-diesel for your car, as well as grass for livestock to eat.

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Agriculture Crops

 Also known as arable farming.

 

Arable Farms

Farms that grow crops are usually referred to as arable farms. Arable farms often grow more than one crop as part of a crop rotation to prevent the build up of pests and diseases. There are also arable farms that keep livestock and there are 27,000 ‘mixed farms’ across the UK.

The agricultural crops industry includes:

• Combinable grains - wheat, barley, oats used for bread, biscuits, animal feed
• Oil seeds - rape for use in cooking and bio diesel
• Beet - sugar beet, the roots processed for sugar, livestock feed
• Tubers - potatoes, mainly for human consumption, seed and livestock feed
• Legumes -  peas, used for human consumption and livestock feed
• Biofuel Crops - Miscanthus which can be burnt to produce heat and electricity
• Forage Crops - grass, forage maize, conserved for winter feeding of livestock 

Arable farms need a range of businesses to support them such as:

• Bee Keepers - Bees are vital to pollinate our crops. (Agronomy services advising on crop production and soil management)
• Crop Protection Companies, suppliers ensure crops are protected from pests and diseases
• Agricultural contracting such as ploughing, cultivating soil and spraying crop
• Crop breeding companies, to breed disease resistant and the best performing crops
• Crop consultancy services, to help increase profitability of crop and arable enterprises

Did You Know?

• Grassland is the UK's most important crop by area covering just over half of the entire UK landmass - nearly three times as great as all other crops combined.
• Campaign for Farmed Environment (CFE) was launched in November 2009. CFE aims to retain environmental benefits of set-aside (areas previously not cultivated for crops) by voluntary measures and has three themes of resource protection, farmland birds and wildlife.
• Over 6 million hectares of land is under active environmental management. NFU Why Farming Matters
• Wheat is responsible for the daily production of 10 million loaves of bread.
• Sugar beet growers in the UK supply on contract to a single processor (British Sugar Plc). The price of sugar beet is determined annually based on a pricing mechanism developed by independent agricultural consultants.
• Currently the UK is 74% self sufficient in all indigenous type food and 60% self sufficient in all food. NFU
• Typical English loamy soil is teeming with life, containing 25 tonnes of micro-organisms per hectare – including 4 tonnes of earthworms, 10 tonnes of fungi, and 1 tonne of springtails, spiders, beetles and snails. NFU Why Farming Matters

The Facts

• The industry is dominated by small businesses with 26% having no staff and 97% employing less than ten
• There is an ageing workforce, 41% of people working in agriculture are 50 years or older with the average age of key decision makers on the farm being 55 or older.
• 81% of workers in agriculture are male
• A high proportion (56%) of the workforce is self-employed (national average 13%)