European organic market grew to more than 26 billion euros in 2014

In 2014, the European organic market grew by approximately 7.6 percent to a value of more than 26 billion euros. Consumers in the European Union spent 23.9 billion euros on organic food. This is shown by the latest data provided by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and the Agricultural Market Information Company (AMI) in association with IFOAM EU. The data were presented at BioFach.

With a share of 30% of retail sales Germany is the biggest organic market in Europe followed by France (18%), the United Kingdom (9%) and Italy (8%). From a global view the 28 states of the European Union represent the second largest organic market worldwide with 38% of the global retail sales. The U.S. however, leader in organic sales, represents 43%, China is already at the third place.

Europe: Distribution of retail sales 2014. Graphic FiBL

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.

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).

Europe: Distribution of retail sales 2014. Graphic FiBL

Europe´s retail: Distribution of retail sales 2014. Graphic FiBL

Russia and Spain convert the most land to organic

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.

Europe: 10 countries with the highest growth of organic land in 2014. Graphic FiBL

Online database and further resources

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.

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 .

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.

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