How many people in Europe work in the agricultural sector? How have prices of agricultural goods changed over the years? Which country is the leading producer? It is to these questions and many more that Eurostart, the EU's Statistical Office, tried to provide an answer to.
In 2014, Romania was the European country with the most crops, whereas Ireland occupied the leading place for what concerns livestock production.
Crops represented 52% of the total agricultural production, whereas products of animal origin accounted for 43%.
Crops largely contribute to the national production in countries like Romania (73%), Greece (69%), Bulgaria (65%) and Croatia (62%).
France and Germany produce almost 40% of cereal - in detail, France produced 67.3 million tons (22%), Germany 47.8 million tons (16%), Poland 28.5 million tons, Spain 25.4 million tons, Romania 20.9 million tons and the UK 20 million tons.
Italy holds the leading place where tomatoes are concerned, and Poland is the leading apple producer.
More in detail, Italy produced 5.2 million tons of tomatoes in 2013, i.e. over one third (35%) of the entire EU production. Spain followed with 3.8 million tons (25%), then Portugal with 1.2 million tons and Greece with 1 million tons.
For what concerns carrots, Poland and the UK were the European leaders (both with 0.7 million tons, 14% of the total production) followed by Germany and the Netherlands, both with 0.6 million tons (11%), and France (10%).
Almost half of the European onion production (5.7 million tons) was grown in the Netherlands (1.3 million tons, 23%) and Spain (1.2 million tons, 21%).
The EU produces 12 million tons of apples, 26% of which is grown in Poland (3.1 million tons), followed by Italy (18%, 2.2 million tons) and France (17%, 2.1 million tons).
FreshPlaza processing of ec.europa.eu data