Significant change in farm land usage
Farm land use in Lanarkshire is changing; there is now less livestock and a lower area of cereal crop grown than a decade ago, and there are more smallholdings.
The compulsory annual agricultural census monitors changes in farming and a review of the statistics for the last ten years reveals significant changes and could indicate that the era of family farming is coming to an end.
Lanarkshire farming has been dominated by family farming units and over hundreds of years the trend had been that, as small farms became uneconomic, they would be sold.
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