Austria 2025 – Perspectives for Austrian Agriculture Until 2025
The future development of Austria's agricultural structure and consumption patterns is not expected to be fundamentally different from that of recent years. Thus, the decline in the number of farms and employment in agriculture will persist, along with changes in consumer habits. Sales of foodstuffs will increase, even in those areas where a decrease in per-capita consumption was recently observed. Austria's agriculture will be able to participate in the expected market growth. However, it is not clear whether it will be possible to boost domestic production, as the loss of productive agricultural land is rapidly accelerating. Given the trend towards restricted public funding, which is important to agriculture for structural reasons, farms are increasingly obliged to tap new sources of income and/or lower costs. Small businesses in areas with unfavourable agricultural conditions will continue to seek the additional potential of forestry, direct marketing, tourism and non-agricultural activities.