Farming through the generations
A green, clean and pleasant land, Northern Ireland boasts an amazing diversity of beautiful scenery for such a small region. Some 84% of the region’s 1.35 million hectares is dedicated to agriculture and forestry, reflecting the fact that farming is more important in Northern Ireland than any other region in the UK. Along with the food and drink industry it accounts for 4% of the region’s Gross Value Added and 7% of employment. Some 88% of farms are family-owned and successive generations of the rural community have shaped the landscape, each generation protecting the inheritance of the next. There are 32,600 farmers – of these, 18,200 work full-time and 14,400 are part-time.
A culture of lifelong learning is firmly embedded in the agri-food industry with the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise, 
offering further and higher education programmes and well as providing industry training programmes.
- Beef cattle, milk and sheep account for approximately 75% of gross agricultural output, with intensive enterprises such as pigs, eggs and poultry accounting for 10%.
- There are more than 20,000 beef and sheep farms with the beef herd totalling 296,900 cows compared to 1,027,000 ewes.
