(Nuremberg, February 10, 2016) The countries with the highest per capita organic consumption in 2014 was Switzerland; at 221 euros in 2014, followed by Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Germany.The organic share of the total food market is highest in Denmark (7.6 %), Switzerland (7.1 %) and Austria (6.5 %, 2011).
Retail sales in 2014 totalled 23.9 billion euros in the European Union and 26.2 billion in Europe. The four biggest markets were Germany (7.9 billion euros), France (4.8 billion euros), the UK (2.3 billion euros) and Italy (2.1 billion euros). The first market data available for 2015 show that growth continues in these large markets. In a global context, the US is the largest market (27.1 billion euros with a per capita consumpotion of 85 euros in 2014), followed by Germany.
As well as the markets, the area of land under organic cultivation also continued to grow: by almost 0.3 million hectares. Organically cultivated land constitutes 11.6 million hectares in Europe and 10.3 million hectares in the European Union, which is 2.4 % and 5.7 % of the total agricultural land respectively. The European countries with the most organic land are Spain (1.7 million hectares), Italy (1.4 million hectares), and France (1.1 million hectares) and Germany (1.0 million hectares). The share of organic agricultural land is more than 10 % in eight European countries, with Liechtenstein (30.9 %), Austria (19.4 %) and Sweden (16.4 %) having the highest organic shares.
Further information
Contact
- Helga Willer, FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture
- Diana Schaack, AMI – Agricultural Market Information Company /Agrarmarkt Informations-GmbH, Dreizehnmorgenweg 10, 53175 Bonn, Germany, Tel. +49 228 33805-0, diana.schaack(at)ami-informiert.de, www.ami-informiert.de
- Stephen Meredith, IFOAM EU Group, Rue du Commerce 124, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, Tel. +32 2 280 12 23, Fax: +32 2 735 73 81, info(at)ifoam-eu.org, www.ifoam.eu.org
Links
- fibl.org/en/media: Media release and graphs on the internet
- fibl.org: Website of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL)
- ami-informiert.de: Website of the Agricultural Market Information Company AMI
- ifoam-eu.org: Website of IFOAM-EU
- biofach.de: Website of BIOFACH
Online database and further resources
- ifoam-eu.org/en/organic-europe: Website to explore the online interactive infographics
- organicdatanetwork.net/odn-statistics/odn-statistics-data: Website of the OrganicDataNetwork project with European organic farming statistics
- organic-world.net/statistics/statistics-data-tables: FiBL statistics on organic agriculture worldwide
More information about organic agriculture in Europe can be found in the yearbook “The World of Organic Agriculture 2016”, which is available for download at www.organic-world.net/yearbook/yearbook-2016.html.
Learn about the latest developments in Europe by exploring IFOAM EU’s new interactive infographs on production and market data in Europe available at www.ifoam-eu.org/en/organic-europe.
Data collection
Data collection on organic farming in Europe was carried out by FiBL and AMI. FiBL activities were carried out under the framework of the global survey on organic farming supported by the Swiss State Secretatiat of Economic Affairs, the International Trade Centre and NürnbergMesse. European data collection was supported by the European Commission.