Assessing organic farming uptake across Europe using census data from 9 million farms

The uptake of organic farming is heterogeneous across the European Union (EU) and across farming systems. According to the 2020 agricultural census, at 14.8 million ha, the area under organic farming accounted for 9.1% of the total EU agricultural land, and close to 20% of the area under organic farming in the world. The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy, aims to have 25% of the EU’s agricultural land under organic farming by 2030.

While the agricultural census from 2020 collected data on organic farming uptake by farming type, geospatial data was not available, so far. Disclosing census data at a more granular level is subject to confidentiality treatment as specified in the Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/1091 on Integrated Farm Statistics (IFS). Confidentiality requirements on the frequency and dominance of farm holdings must be applied to map the data. Following the recent implementation of a methodology that accounts for these requirements, spatial mapping of the 2020 census became possible, providing an unprecedented view on EU agriculture. In addition, this also increases the number of data points available for analysis by up to three magnitudes.

Using this data, we spatially map the shares of organic farming associated to permanent grasslands, green fodder, arable crops including cereals, and permanent crops such as fruit, olives, and vineyards. We quantify current levels and local uptake gaps, investigate which farming types are characterized by the largest share of organic farming, and identify the most important drivers of organic farming across the EU. To identify these drivers we distinguish natural factors such as physiography (soils), climate, but also socio-economic characteristics related to farm structure (e.g. farm physical and economic size, demography, labour), as derived from the new datasets. This is then compared to the commitment EU Member States have quantified up to 2028 in terms of the share of utilised agricultural area (UAA) supported by the Common Agricultural Policy for organic farming as part of the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.