In 2022, the agricultural area devoted to arable crop farming has increased by 10.5 thousand hectares (2.0 percent) to 536 thousand ha.
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The barley crop cultivation area has grown the most, while seed onions and starch potatoes are being cultivated less. The area devoted to arable crops had decreased by over 15 percent as of 2000.
This is shown by provisional results from the 2022 Agricultural Census, conducted by Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
In 2022, seed onion cultivation occupied 27.3 thousand ha. This is 2.8 thousand ha less (-9.3 percent) than in the previous year, when the area still grew by 11.3 percent. Over a longer period, however, the seed onion area has increased. Relative to 2000, the seed onion acreage has doubled.
The cultivation area for ware potatoes grew by 5.5 thousand hectares (7.7 percent) in 2022, to 76.9 thousand hectares. In 2020 and 2021, the area was still showing a decrease. Over the past year, declines have been recorded in the cultivation areas for seed potatoes (-1 percent) and starch potatoes (-4 percent).
In 2022, nearly half (47 percent) of the potato acreage consisted of ware potatoes. The areas devoted to seed potatoes and starch potatoes both occupied a share of 26.5 percent. Summer wheat acreage increased by slightly over 27 percent.
In 2022, the wheat cultivation area occupied nearly 125 thousand ha, approximately 5.4 thousand ha (4.5 percent) more than in the previous year. The area devoted to summer wheat cultivation grew by 27.3 percent over the past year.
This year, the summer wheat area occupies approximately 16 thousand ha. Almost 13 percent of the total wheat area currently consists of summer wheat.
The summer wheat area tends to fluctuate from year to year. The largest share of summer wheat was seen in 2011. Around one-quarter of the total wheat cultivation area consisted of summer wheat that year. This year, the winter wheat area increased by almost 2 thousand ha (1.9 percent) on the previous year, to 109 thousand ha.
Among the cereals, the spring barley cultivation area also increased. The area of barley stands at nearly 37 thousand ha in 2022; this is 6.9 thousand ha (23 percent) more than last year. Especially the area of spring barley increased, by almost 30 percent. This year, spring barley cultivation occupies 26.4 thousand ha.
The spring barley area tends to fluctuate from year to year as well. As of this year, 71 percent of the barley cultivation area consists of spring barley. As for winter barley, in 2022 the cultivation area grew by nearly 0.8 ha (8.3 percent) year on year to 10.6 ha. ■