Agricultural blocks

Agricultural block is a data set containing information on the maximum eligible agricultural land as defined by the EU. The farm blocks are used by the Board of Agriculture to administer aid to farmers, for example to check the area data in farmers’ applications and to inform farmers of the relevant data. The data set does not contain all agricultural land in Sweden, but only the parts for which a farmer has applied for aid at some point. A block is a polygon/surface delimiting an area of agricultural land. A block is bounded by fixed boundaries. Examples of fixed boundaries are roads, stone walls, forests and settlements. A block can also be demarcated by regional borders (congregation borders from 2000). A block must, with a few exceptions, be at least 0.1 ha. On a block, only one farmer can have agricultural land (except for grazing land that is co-grazed). The data set of agricultural blocks contains about 1 143 000 blocks. Of these, around 891,000 are arable land blocks and around 252,000 pasture blocks. The total area is 3.2 million hectares, of which 2.7 million hectares are arable land and 510 000 hectares are pastures. The average area of arable land blocks is 3.03 ha and for pasture blocks the corresponding figure is 2.03 ha.