Steady growth for global organic farming

According to the 2021 statistics yearbook ‘The World of Organic Agriculture’, which presents the latest statistics and emerging trends in organic farming from 187 countries around the world, organic farmland increased by 1,1 million hectares in 2019, and organic retail sales continued to grow.

Organic foods were introduced on a large scale in the early 1990s. It took over 15 years for global organic product sales to reach US$50 billion (R753 billion) in 2008. In 2018, sales surpassed the US$100 billion (R1,5 trillion) mark. According to the latest data published in the 2021 edition of ‘The World of Organic Agriculture’, with COVID- 19 changing the way people shop and eat, the next leap, to US$150 billion (R2,3 trillion), could be within the next few years.

GLOBAL TRENDS

The global market for organic food reached US$112 billion (R1,7 trillion) in 2019. The market has expanded by 55% since 2013. The US is the leading market, followed by Germany and France. In 2019, many major markets continued to show strong growth rates; the French market, for example, increased by more than 13%. Danish and Swiss consumers spent the most on organic food (€344 and €338 [R6 200 and R6 100] per capita, respectively). Denmark had the highest organic market share, with 12,1% of its total food market.

In 2019, a total of 3,1 million organic producers were reported. Fifty-one percent of the world’s organic producers were in Asia, followed by Africa (27%), Europe (14%) and Latin America (7%). India had the highest number of producers (1 366 000), followed by Uganda (210 000) and Ethiopia (204 000). However, while there were high numbers of producers in India and some African countries, many of these were small-scale farmers, and in terms of land area, the region with the largest portion of global organic agricultural land was Oceania (Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia).