According to a new report released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, organic farming in the 27 countries of the European Union covered 7.8 million hectares* in 2008, up by seven percent compared with 2007. In 2008, the five member states with the largest organic area in the European Union were Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.
Between 2007 and 2008, the total organic area increased in all member states for which data are available, except Italy (- 13 %). The highest increases were recorded in Spain (+ 33 %), Bulgaria (+ 22 %) and Slovakia (+ 19 %).
The report was published in the Eurostat series Statistics in Focus.
* It should be noted that the total area under organic management communicated by Eurostat differs from the total calculated by FiBL in the frame of its global/European survey on organic farming (FiBL figure: 7.5 million hectares). This is because Eurostat includes the wild collection areas for Spain, where as FiBL does not count this areas as agricultural land. For more information about Spain see the data revision pages.
More information
External links
- epp.EUROSTAT.ec.europa.eu: Statistics in Focus 10/2010. Area under organic farming increased by 7.4 percent between 2007 and 2008 in the EU-27
- epp.EUROSTAT.ec.europa.eu: Organic area up by 21% in the EU between 2005 and 2008. Press release of March 1, 2010
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