Organic Agriculture World-wide: Current Statistics

Summary

Organic agriculture is developing rapidly, and statistical information is now available from 154 countries of the world. Its share of agricultural land and farms continues to grow in many countries. The main results of the latest global survey on certified organic farming2 show (data from 2008; see also page 28):
• 35 million hectares of agricultural land are managed organically by almost 1.4 million producers.
• The regions with the largest areas of organically managed agricultural land are Oceania (12.1 million hectares), Europe (8.2 million hectares) and Latin America (8.1 million hectares). The countries with the most organic agricultural land are Australia, Argentina and China.
• The highest shares of organically managed agricultural land are in the Falkland Islands (36.9 percent), Liechtenstein (29.8 percent) and Austria (15.9 percent).
• The countries with the highest numbers of producers are India (340’000 producers), Uganda (180’000) and Mexico (130’000). More than one third of organic producers are in Africa.
• On a global level, the organic agricultural land area increased in all regions, in total by almost three million hectares, or nine percent, compared to the data from 2007. Twenty-six percent (or 1.65 million hectares) more land under organic management was reported for Latin America, mainly due to strong growth in Argentina. In Europe the organic land increased by more than half a million hectares, in Asia by 0.4 million.
• About one-third of the world’s organically managed agricultural land – 12 million hectares – is located in developing countries. Most of this land is in Latin America, with Asia and Africa in second and third place. The countries with the largest area under organic management are Argentina, China and Brazil.
• 31 million hectares are organic wild collection areas and land for bee keeping. The majority of this land is in developing countries – in stark contrast to agricultural land, of which two-thirds is in developed countries. Further organic areas include aquaculture areas (0.43 million hectares), forest (0.01 million hectares) and grazed non-agricultural land (0.32 million hectares).
Almost two-thirds of the agricultural land under organic management is grassland (22 million hectares). The cropped area (arable land and permanent crops) constitutes 8.2 million hectares, (up 10.4 percent from 2007), which represents a quarter of the organic agricultural land.