Data collection
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About the data collection and the global survey on organic farming
The global survey* on organic farming is currently carried out by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IFOAM. Numerous experts from more than 140 countries are contributing to the data collection.
Since 2008 the data collection activities have been supported under a project of the International Trade Centre ITC and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO.
NürnbergMesse, the organisers of BioFach Fair, have supported thie survey and the yearbook 'The World of Organic Agriculture' since 2000.
In the yearbook 'The World of Organic Agriculture' the data collected in the frame of the survey are presented annually.
* The following information is collected in the frame of the global survey: Area, production, land use, crops, operators
SECO ITC project
Since 2008 the data collection activities have been supported under a project of the International Trade Centre ITC and the Swiss State Secretariat of Economic Affairs SECO. Under this project the following activities are funded:
- Building of a web based data collection tool (to be finalized in spring 2009)
- Complete redesign of the www.organic-world.net homepage (as a tool for the web based data collection, to provide the statistical material and graphs as well as backgound information (to be finalized in the spring of 2009)
- Data collection and processing
- Overview of data availability world-wide
- Dissemination activities
More information
Some history
The global organic survey was initiated by the former organizers and initiators of BioFach, Sunder und Rottner, who approached the German 
Foundation Ecolgy & Agriculture SOEL in 1999 and asked them, if they could perform data collection on organic agriculture world-wide. (On the history of BioFach see article in the Eve magazine).
Since then the survey has been carried out by SOEL (until 2004) and FiBL (since 2005).
IFOAM became a partner in the data collection activities in 2007; since that time the data from sub-Saharan Africa are collected by the IFOAM Africa Office.
Since 2000 the latest global organic figures have been presented annually at the BioFach Fair in Nuremberg, of which IFOAM is the patron.
