The organic trade in Europe continued to grow and increased by 7.6% to more than 26 billion Euro in 2014. According to the joint analysis of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and the Agricultural Market Information Company (AMI) in cooperation with the IFOAM EU-Group a turnover of 23.9 billion Euro was reached in the European Union in 2014.
Some countries, such as Sweden and Norway, can even celebrate double growth figures. During the BIOFACH the figures were interactively available at the stand of the IFOAM EU-Group.
The country with the highest sales per head for organic products is Switzerland, with 221 Euro (2014), followed by Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Liechtenstein and Germany (almost 100 Euro). The share of organic sales in supermarkets was also the highest in Europe. The highest share was in Denmark with 7.6% followed by Switzerland with 7.1% and Austria 6.5% (2011). Germany reached an average position in the European ranking with 4.4%.
Worldwide the USA has the largest organic trade (27.1 billion Euro revenue and sales, per head 95 Euro) followed by the European markets in Germany (7.9 billion Euro) and France (4.8 billion Euro). The most recent figures show that the growth has continued in 2015.
The surface of organically farmed land has increased too, to almost 0.3 million hectares. At the end of 2014 the surface in Europe was 11.6 million hectares and the surface in the European Union was 10.3 million hectares and organically farmed. That is 2.4% and 5.7% of the total acreage respectively. Spain takes the first position (1.7 million hectare) followed by Italy (1.4 million hectare), France (1.1 million hectare) and Germany (1 million hectare). In 8 European countries more than 10% of the acreage is farmed organically. The largest shares are in Liechtenstein (30.9 %), Austria (19.4 %) and Sweden (16.4 %).