The type of tenure depends on the situation of the UAA with regard to the holder in the Census reference period.

This characteristic only refers to agricultural holdings with land and is the legal status under which the holder of the agricultural holding acts.

The same holding may consist of land under different forms of tenure:

Owned UAA
Area farmed by the agricultural holding and held by the holder as property, or farmed by the holder acting as a usufructuary, heritable long-term leaseholder or equivalent.

In family units, land that forms part of the holding and to which a member of the family nucleus has ownership rights is taken to be owner-farmed; land that forms part of a holding owned by a de facto association and belongs to any of the partners is also considered to be owned.

Areas owned by the holder and assigned to third parties are not considered to be part of this group or part of the holding. In the case of holdings owned by a municipal or neighbourhood community, areas which have been distributed by plot of land or rented out in the reference year do not form part of the holding.

Rented UAA
Area rented by the agricultural holding in return for a fixed rent agreed in advance (paid in cash, kind or otherwise) in a rental agreement (written or verbal).

The UAA is allocated to only one agricultural holding. If the UAA is rented out to more than one agricultural holding during the reference year, it is allocated to the agricultural holding which used it for the longest period during the reference year.

It also includes the area of any other holding whose owner provides it in return for work or services provided, as long as it is not an area made available to an agricultural worker in the form of a salary.

Sharecropped UAA
Area farmed in partnership by the landlord and the sharecropper under a written or verbal sharecropping agreement. The output (economic or physical) of the sharecropped area is distributed between the two parties as agreed.

For the purposes of the Census, the sharecropper is considered to be the holder, provided that there is shared economic responsibility between the owner and the sharecropper.

UAA on common land
Common land comprises permanent grassland and pastures, horticultural land and any other type of UAA that has been assigned by plot of land to the holding for exclusive use, i.e. it has been assigned to and is used only by this holding during the agricultural year.

This land does not belong (neither owned nor rented) to the holder of the agricultural holding and common rights apply on it.

UAA under other types of tenure
Areas farmed rent-free, in trust, in dispute, at sufferance, under ground rent leases, under long-term rental agreements [foros], under communal ownership that are distributed by plot of land or rented out and, in general, any area not included in any of the types of tenure listed above.