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Ownership of agricultural land in Denmark

Contact info

Food Industries, Business Statistics
Karsten Larsen
+45 21 29 55 76

kkl@dst.dk

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Ownership of agricultural land in Denmark 2024

The purpose of the statistics Ownership of agricultural land is to show how the Danish agricultural land is distributed by nationality of the owners.

Statistical presentation

The statistics show on an annual basis the number of owners and how the ownership of Danish agricultural land is distributed by the nationalities of the owners, regions, type of owner, gender, age and size.

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Statistical processing

The IACS register (Integrated Agricultural Control System) The General Land Register is merged with the Owner Register. For personal identification numbers, citizenship is found via the Personal Register. For business ownership, the CVR is used for real and legal owners. If there are only legal owners, data from Eurostat's group register is supplemented, whereby the owner's nationality can be determined. For foreign owners, the country of residence is used as the country code. The owners can be both private individuals and companies.

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Relevance

The statistics meet a need, particularly from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to know the extent of Danish agricultural land in foreign ownership. The statistics are also expected to be of interest to political parties, the industry and the public in general.

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Accuracy and reliability

The statistics cover all agricultural land in Denmark for which crop subsidies have been applied for. Very little agricultural land is cultivated in Denmark for which area support is not applied for. The source data for the statistics are obtained from the General Agricultural Register (GLR), which is also used as a source in the Agricultural and Horticultural Census, and covers virtually all agricultural land in Denmark, and is considered a reliable source. The cadastral register overlaid on the applied plots of land is considered to be of high quality. However, the comparison of field maps and the cadastre gives rise to some choices of cadastres/plots for the statistics. For ownership by persons, citizenship is considered to be of very high quality. Information on ownership from the CVR when it is persons or real owners is considered to be of good quality. Supplement with data from Eurostat's group register are made.

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Timeliness and punctuality

The statistics will be published 4-5 months from the reference time December 31.

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Comparability

The statistics are comparable with the farm structure survey, but the figures for the agricultural area are not exactly identical in the two statistics. This is due to fact that the statistics include all land cultivated by farmers applying for crop subsidies whereas the farm structure survey as main rule only include farm of at least 5,0 hectares. The units in the two statistics are not the same. The statistics on ownership of agricultural land includes the landowners which could be farmers men not necessarily are.

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Accessibility and clarity

These statistics are published in Statbank Denmark and the News letter "Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik" (in Danish only),

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