Presentation: Comparing reasons for opting out inAustria, Denmark, Estonia and Norway

Summary

While the number of organic farms was rising rapidly in almost all European Countries since the beginning of the 1990s, some organic farmers were opting out of certified organic farming the later years. For farmers in Estonia and Denmark, unsatisfactory economic results were named as dominating reason for opting out. In Denmark these problems were mainly due to marketing problems. Other important reasons in Estonia were too much bureaucracy, difficulties to fit animal production to the regulations and difficulties in weed control. Difficult and changing regulations, getting stricter over time, were mentioned most frequently by Norwegian and Austrian farmers and also important for those in Denmark.