Organic farming has again grown steadily in Germany in 2015. This is evident from the annual reports of the German states. The number of German organic farms was 24,736; 5.7% more than in the previous year (2014: 23,398). The organic agricultural acreage of 1,088,838 hectares grew by 3.9% (2014: 1,047,633 ha).
The German Minister for Economic Affairs Christian Schmidt declared: " The number of companies and acreage in organic farming are growing steadily. The market is also growing. In 2015 the organic market achieved a turnover of more than eight billion euros in Germany, whereby there’s a strong upward trend. These figures show that organic is becoming increasingly popular with consumers and organic farming has become a major pillar of the German agricultural and food economy alongside conventional agriculture. My goal is to continue to advance organic farming in Germany. For this reason I have initiated the future strategy for organic agriculture and I am dedicated to a rapid revision of the EU agricultural regulation in Brussels, to strengthen consumers’ confidence and the organic food economy. Buyers should be sure of one thing: where it says organic it must actually be organic."
The proportion of organic companies to the total number of agricultural companies was 8.7% last year (2014: 8.3%). The organic agricultural acreage comprised 6.5% of the total agricultural acreage (2014: 6.3%). In total 38.259 growers, processors, importers and trading companies were operational in the organic sector in 2015.
The structural data on organic farming in Germany in 2015 can be found at: www.ble.de/strukturdaten-oekolandbau