Food Systems and Land Tenure in EU Rural Areas: Structural Typologies and Complementary Evidence
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This deliverable (Deliverable D4.3 - GRANULAR project) develops a territorial assessment of European rural food systems through four functional dimensions: production, environmental conditions, consumption, and trade. It also examines farmland ownership as an institutional layer that helps explain who controls the land base on which rural food systems depend. The framework supports the European Union’s Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas by identifying recurring structural configurations that can inform place-sensitive policy analysis. The production analysis identifies six regimes across Farm Accountancy Data Network regions. European agriculture is differentiated by land-use orientation, livestock intensity, input use, labour organisation, and capitalisation. The largest group consists of arable-oriented systems with moderate livestock intensity, moderate input use, and a predominantly family-based labour structure. Other regimes represent grassland-oriented livestock systems, permanent-crop systems with greater paid labour and input use, lower-input arable systems, commercially organised low-livestock arable systems, and a small group of highly intensive arable–livestock systems. The environmental analysis identifies five agro-environmental regimes at Local Administrative Unit level. The dominant regime comprises diversified mixed farming with moderate livestock pressure and limited organic coverage. Other regimes combine organic management and lower livestock pressure, reduced crop diversification, high crop and livestock diversity, or intensive livestock production. These configurations show that environmental conditions are shaped by the interaction of land-use diversity, organic management, and livestock pressure. Their spatial distribution follows recognisable territorial patterns across Europe. The consumption analysis identifies six adult dietary profiles based on the composition of food baskets. The profiles differ in the relative importance of dairy, cereals, meat, vegetables, fruit, juices, and alcoholic beverages. Their geographical distribution reflects broad European dietary patterns, including dairy-oriented systems in northern and western areas, grain- and meat-oriented systems in eastern and south-eastern areas, and vegetable-oriented profiles in selected Mediterranean contexts. The trade analysis classifies countries according to import dependency, net trade direction, and the composition of net trade flows. Using food-trade data for 2022–2024, the analysis shows a continuous distribution of national trade positions. Most countries occupy intermediate positions between strong external dependence and high export orientation. The results point to different combinations of domestic production, external sourcing, and trade specialisation across European food systems. The land-tenure analysis uses Eurostat farm-structure data for 2016 and 2020 at NUTS-2 level. It distinguishes Natural Persons, Legal Persons, and Group Holdings and examines ownership shares, changes over time, and the relationship between Legal Person ownership and farm economic performance. These findings add an institutional perspective to the four food-system typologies by showing how ownership and control of farmland may shape investment capacity, adaptation, and the organisation of rural production. The ownership results require careful interpretation because the available categories do not directly measure tenure security, land concentration, or decision-making power. Across the four typologies, structurally similar territories form coherent spatial patterns. Robustness tests indicate that the main configurations remain stable under adjacent cluster solutions and alternative trade specifications, with changes concentrated mainly around classification boundaries. The results provide a comparative baseline for examining territorial differentiation, market dependence, environmental pressure, land control, and future food-system pathways. The typologies are descriptive analytical tools: they support comparison and policy interpretation without ranking regions or establishing causal relationships.
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204199355