Agricultural Census 2020: Farmland management and irrigation 2020

In 2020, approximately one million hectares of the total utilised agricultural area in Finland was fertilised using artificial fertilisers alone. Animal manure was applied over roughly 700,000 hectares. The area available for irrigation totalled a little more than 70,000 hectares, comprising 3% of the total utilised agricultural area. Contract fields were cultivated on some 4,500 farms, covering nearly 100,000 hectares. 

• Regarding production lines, dairy farms had the largest area treated with cow manure. They used both artificial fertilisers and animal manure over some 250,000 hectares and manure alone over nearly 70,000 hectares.

• Contract fields were most commonly received by dairy farms and handed out by farms whose main production line was other crop production.

• The largest contract field area (14,000 hectares) was in Ostrobothnia.

• The largest area available for irrigation (14,200 hectares) was in Southwest Finland.

• The proportion of the area available for irrigation from the total utilised agricultural area was the highest in the Åland Islands (11%).

• On farms whose production line was outdoor horticultural production, approximately a quarter of all fields were available for irrigation.