Welcome to the East Anglia

About East Anglia  

From the fertile Fens to the grazed grasslands of the Waveney Valley, East Anglia is one of the most productive agricultural landscapes in the world. As well as producing quality food, its farmers and growers support thousands of jobs, manage the countryside and offer solutions to alleviate problems posed by climate change. 

The East Anglia region comprises Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

It is best known for its cereal crops, with farmers growing more than a quarter of England's wheat and barley. Out of a total farmed area of 1.4 million hectares, almost a third of that land was used for wheat in 2007.

But it is a major region for horticulture as well, cultivating everything from peas and beans to apples, strawberries, salad crops, flowers and shrubs.

Farmers in East Anglia also harvest well over half the country's entire sugar beet crop - mainly in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. And almost a third of England's potato crop is grown here as well.

Britain's pig and poultry farms are centred largely on East Anglia - not surprisingly as so much of the grain needed for animal feed is grown here.

Laying hens produce about 2.2 million eggs every day and our region's farmers supply a quarter of England's table chicken.

We also have the second largest number of pigs in England, 1.1 million animals on around 1900 farms.

Our sheep flocks, beef and dairy herds may be small compared with other regions but they are important to the farming 'balance' of the region and their grazing plays a vital role in looking after the landscape.

About 50,000 people work directly within the agricultural and horticultural sector but many more jobs depend on it, including workers in engineering, livestock feed manufacture, transport, the veterinary profession and agricultural research and development.

Agriculture and horticulture are also the backbone of rural tourism, a major regional employer supporting 167,000 jobs. Tourism brings hundreds of millions of pounds into the rural economy every year as well.

Around three quarters of land in East Anglia is used for agriculture, so farmers play an essential role in managing the countryside.

They carry out daily care for the countryside on a scale unmatched by any single conservation agency or government department.

Some of the work is paid for under schemes such as environmental stewardship. East Anglia has more land covered by this new scheme than any other region.