General data background

Compared with the first organic survey in 2000 (by the Foundation Ecology and Agriculture (SOEL), the organically managed area has increased considerably.

At present, FiBL is in the process of analyzing data that have become available in retrospect. Details on such data revisions and updates are available at the page on data revisions at this homepage. 

Preliminary results suggest that the organically managed area worldwide has tripled since 1999. It should be noted that data communicated in the graph on the right differ from those communicated in the corresponding editions of 'The World of Organic Agriculture.'

In general, data availability is improving every year. This is because more and more countries are establishing data collection systems (total organic area, land use, crop, production, and operator data), either by private or government organizations.

According to the FiBL and IFOAM survey, 55 countries have well functioning government data collection systems in place, and 33 have private collection systems. For the remaining countries, no permanent collection system is in place.

For the countries that have no collection system in place, FiBL and IFOAM attempt to get the data from major international certifiers or from contacts in the country, who provided the data specifically for the survey. These data are often not complete, and there is a problem of continuity over the years. Particularly in Africa and in Asia, but also in countries in other regions such as Oceania, collection systems are still underdeveloped.

Because of the group of countries that have no data collection system in place, at a global level, data comparison over the years remains problematic. The applies to the land under organic management, the land use and the crop data as well as the number of farms.

In the framework of the latest global organic survey (2009), the local experts were asked to provide for the organically managed  land area and for all crops:

a) Total certified organically managed land;

b) Certified land in conversion;

c) Certified, fully converted land.

It should be noted that:

a) Not for all countries information on the conversion status was available;

b) Some countries only provided data on the fully converted land;

c) For some countries data were collated from several certifiers, some of which provided information on the conversion status whereas others did not.

Therefore: Neither at a country level, nor at a crop level and most of all not at the level of the geographical regions, the sum given for land under conversion and the fully converted land necessarily adds up to the total land under organic management (=conversion land, fully converted land including land for which no such details were available).

To find precise figures on the number organic farms remains difficult, as

• some countries report the number of smallholders, and others only the numbers of companies, projects or grower groups, which may each comprise a number of producers;
• some countries provide the number of producers per crop, and there may be overlaps for those growers who grow several crops:
• some countries do not provide data on the producers at all.  

The global number of organic producers should consequently be treated with caution.

FiBL and IFOAM also collected data on further operator types like processors, importers and traders, smallholder groups, etc. At a global level, these data are still incomplete and are, therefore, not published at present. FiBL and IFOAM will continue to work on this issue.

In order to calculate the percentages, the data for most countries were taken from the FAO Statistical database FAOSTAT*(as of 2005). For the European Union, most data (as of 2007) were taken from Eurostat.**

Where available, data for total agricultural land from ministries was employed (for instance US, Switzerland, and Austria), which sometimes differ considerably from those published by Eurostat or FAOSTAT.

Please note that in some cases the calculation of the shares of organically managed land, based on the Eurostat and FAOSTAT data, might differ from the organic shares obtained from ministries or local experts.

*FAOSTAT, Data Archives, the FAO Homepage, FAO, Rome at faostat.fao.org > Resources > Resourcestat

**Eurostat: Basic data – key agricultural statistics