Structural Changes in EU Farms as a Sustainability Factor Determined by Pressures at Different Territorial Levels

The structural change in the European Union (EU) involves a decline in the number of holdings and a transformation of farming systems. This study examines the territorial dimensions of this process using data from the 2010 and 2020 Agricultural Censuses and the Territorial Shift Share Analysis method. The analysis compares changes at the EU-27, Member State, and NUTS 2 regional levels to assess the contributions of EU central, national, and regional trends, without identifying specific causal mechanisms. The study uses three scenarios - status quo, optimistic, and pessimistic - to project the number of farms by 2030. The results indicate that, compared to 2020, the number of holdings could decrease by 16% under the basic scenario and by 33% under the pessimistic scenario, whereas the optimistic scenario projects a slight increase of 1%. The territorial analysis attributes 61% of the projected change to the EU level and 39% to national and regional factors, although their relative contributions vary across Member States. These findings highlight the wide-ranging yet spatially uneven nature of structural changes in agricultural holdings, as well as the importance of accounting for the differences between EU-level trends and national and regional contexts when interpreting agricultural transformations and their implications for policy and sustainable development.