In the past year, the share of domestic eco-land increased by 109,863 hectares (plus 8 percent) to around 1.5 million hectares. The Federation of Organic Food and Beverage (BÖLW) announced today what the German organic sector had been doing in 2018 at this year's annual press conference at the Biofach in Nuremberg.
Continuing good sales development
According to the BÖLW, the increase in sales of organic food and beverages was around 5.5 percent in 2018 according to calculations by the "Biomarker Working Group". This came to a total market volume of €10.91 billion, compared to €10.34 billion in 2017. The total sales of the organic sector are distributed as follows:
- € 2.93 billion (including non-food: € 3.46 billion) in organic food retailing with a market share of around 27 percent
- € 6.43 billion in food retailing (LEH) with an increase in sales of around 8.6 percent and a market share of around 59 percent
- 1.55 billion euros in other businesses with a market share of 14 percent
Less farms despite increasing organic acreage
"In 2018, almost five farmers turned to organic farming every day," says Peter Röhrig, Managing Director of BÖLW. This corresponds to a figure of 1,727 companies that started to farm organically last year. At the turn of the year, according to BÖLW, almost 12 percent of the farms were organic farms, for a total of 31,122 organic farms. Despite the numerous switches to organic and the growing organic acreage, the number of farms in 2018 fell by about 3,100 to 266,690 (compared to 2017, the number of farms fell by about 7,600 to 267,800 farms).
Demands on the Federal Government
The BÖLW Chairman Felix Prinz zu Löwenstein appealed to the Federal Government to act decisively now in order to strengthen bio-dynamics: "So that more companies use the Bio-Chance, so that nature, the environment and businesses benefit and the Federal Republic of Germany and climate objectives, agricultural and economic policies must be coherently and consistently coordinated. "
Of crucial importance for organic is the common European agricultural policy (CAP), stressed the BÖLW chairman further. The CAP would have to be progressively rebuilt to reward peasants for the services society needed from them and for which the market did not pay the farmers. In order to do this, 70% of taxpayers' money would have to be paid back to farmers who voluntarily do more for the environment, climate and biodiversity.
Worldwide bio-area is increasing
Almost 70 million hectares of land are farmed organically worldwide. Growth has never been so extensive.
The positive trend of recent years has continued, according to the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FibL) in a press release accompanying the latest edition of the study "The World of Organic Agriculture".
The organic area in 2017 was 69.8 million hectares. This is 20 percent more than in 2016 and the strongest growth ever recorded.
The global organic market grew to $ 97 billion in 2017. At 40 billion, the US is the largest sales market, followed by Germany with 10 billion.
The highest spenders per capita with 288 euros for organic food are the Swiss. The largest organic market share is in Denmark at 13.3 percent.
In 2017, there were 2.9 million organic producers worldwide, an increase of 5 percent. Most of them in India (835,200), Uganda (210,352) and Mexico (210,000).
Source: Bio-Markt.info / BÖLW / LID.ch