Ireland’s farms by county: how many, how big and what they farm

Ireland had 135,037 farms at the last Census of Agriculture. These charts and maps show where they are, how big they are, what they produce and who farms them, county by county.

More than half of all Irish farms raise beef cattle. Out of 135,037 farms counted in 2020, 74,159 were specialist beef farms. That is more than the dairy, sheep and tillage farms put together.

The figures come from the Census of Agriculture 2020, carried out by the CSO (Central Statistics Office) in September 2020. It is a census of all farms, held every ten years. Collection was moved from June to September 2020 because of COVID-19.

Where the farms are

Cork has the most farms, with 13,704. Galway (12,717) and Mayo (11,920) come next. Dublin has the fewest, with 699.

The west and north-west have many farms, but they tend to be small. The CSO's Northern and Western region holds 57,288 farms, more than four in ten of the national total.

Its farms average 25.8 hectares. A hectare is 10,000 square metres, a square 100 metres on each side.

Fewer farms, but bigger ones

Ireland had 170,578 farms in 1991. By 2020 that had fallen to 135,037, a drop of more than one in five. Over the same years the average farm grew from 26.0 to 33.4 hectares.

The total area farmed hardly changed. It was 4.44 million hectares in 1991 and 4.51 million in 2020. The same land is being worked by fewer, larger farms.

Almost every county lost farms between 2010 and 2020. Dublin fell the most, by 12.4%. Only two counties grew: Wicklow, up 2.6%, and Donegal, up 1.2%.

Average farm size by county

Farms are biggest in the south and east. Dublin has the largest average farm, at 47.3 hectares, followed by Waterford (47.0) and Kilkenny (45.7). Monaghan has the smallest, at 23.2 hectares, with Mayo close behind at 23.4.

An average can hide a lot. One in five farms (20.8%) has less than 10 hectares.

Only 4.4% have 100 hectares or more. The typical, or median, farm is 23.3 hectares: half are smaller and half are bigger.

What Irish farms produce

The CSO sorts each farm by its main activity. A specialist beef farm earns most of its output from cattle reared for meat.

A specialist dairy farm earns most from milk. Tillage means growing crops such as barley and wheat.

Dairy farms are fewer but much bigger. The average dairy farm has 65.1 hectares, more than twice the 26.9 hectares of the average beef farm. Tillage farms average 63.6 hectares.

Dairy in the south, sheep in the hills

Dairy farming is packed into Munster and the south-east. Cork alone has 3,801 dairy farms, about one in four of every dairy farm in the State.

In Cork, 27.7% of farms are dairy farms. In Leitrim the figure is 0.9%.

Sheep farming is strongest in hill and mountain counties. In Donegal, 44.9% of farms are specialist sheep farms, the highest share in the country.

Wicklow (30.1%), Mayo (24.2%) and Kerry (20.4%) follow. Beef farms outnumber dairy and sheep farms in every county except Donegal and Wicklow, where sheep farms lead.

Who farms the land

Irish farmers are getting older. In 2020, a third of farm holders (32.7%) were aged 65 or over, up from 22.8% in 1991.

Only 6.9% were under 35. The average farm holder was 57.2 years old.

Galway has the oldest farm holders, with an average age of 59.2, then Mayo at 59.1. Cork has the youngest, at 55.5. Dairy farmers are the youngest group, with an average age of 52.0.

Women hold more farms than before, but still fewer than one in seven. Mayo has the highest share, at 16.0%.

Monaghan has the lowest, at 10.4%. Women are more likely to hold small farms: 18.9% of farms under 10 hectares have a female holder.

About these figures

• The figures describe farms on 1 September 2020, the reference date of the census. The CSO first published them on 9 December 2021.
• Area farmed (the CSO calls it AAU, agricultural area utilised) means land under crops, silage, hay, pasture and rough grazing in use. It leaves out roads, bog and buildings.
• Farm type is based on the main source of a farm's standard output, not what it grows on every field.
• The county shares for dairy and sheep farms are Irish Wire calculations from CSO counts.
• A later CSO survey, the Farm Structure Survey 2023 (published 17 December 2024), counted 133,174 farms with a mean size of 34.7 hectares, but gives no county figures.