Farms are the basic organisational unit for agricultural production. How many farms are there in the EU and how has their number changed in recent years? Are they becoming bigger and more specialised? And what about the farmers who take production decisions and receive CAP payments – what do we know about them? Every 3-4 years, new data on farm structures in the EU become available. They provide a long-awaited update of key indicators for agricultural policy: farm numbers, farm sizes, land ownership, livestock numbers, as well as characteristics of the agricultural labour force. The latest such update offers data from 2013 and preliminary results have just been published. This brief summarises the main findings, with a particular focus on farmers of different age groups and the characteristics of their farms.