Survey of agriculture, December 2012

Equivalent statistics for each of the other UK countries are produced by the respective administrations and are detailed in the release. Data for the UK as a whole will be published by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) on 14 March 2013.

The key points from the latest release are:

• the number of sheep and lambs rose from 5.8 million to 6.0 million between December 2011 and December 2012.  This was caused by an increase in the number of lambs kept by farmers
• most of these lambs were retained because of poor market conditions during 2012
• the overall number of cattle and calves rose very slightly over the same period. This came after a gradual fall in cattle numbers over several years

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5082
Email: stats.agric@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

March 2014 (provisional - to be confirmed on Due out soon page)