There are currently two dominant trends observed in agriculture of the European Union. The first trend is intensification, concentration and specialization in chosen regions while the second one is marginalization and large-scale abandonment of the production in other regions. Agriculture in the EU is characterised by different types of farms. In 1997, there were almost 7 million agricultural holdings in the EU, with an average size of 18 hectares. However, their number is gradually decreasing due to growing specialization and intensive agriculture. From 1975 to 1995 the quantity of farms declined by over 1.4 million, which is about 20%. In Slovakia, a number of individual farms (physical persons) fell by 30.19% and at the same time, the average agricultural land area increased by 66.48% between 1994 and 2001. In the case of legal persons there was a 33 per cent increase in a number of entities and reduction of 32% in the average agricultural land area.