Global Organic Farmland Continues Steady Expansion

The lat­est data reveal that in 2023, organic farm­land world­wide expanded by 2.6 per­cent, adding 2.5 mil­lion hectares and bring­ing the total global organic agri­cul­tural area to almost 99 mil­lion hectares.

The World of Organic Agriculture 2025 report, pub­lished by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and IFOAM Organics International, indi­cates that organic farm­land accounted for 2.1 per­cent of all agri­cul­tural land world­wide in 2023.

Spain led the growth among olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries, with its organic farm­land expand­ing by nearly 12 per­cent or more than 300,000 hectares.

This posi­tioned Spain among the coun­tries with the high­est organic agri­cul­ture expan­sion, trail­ing Uruguay (30 per­cent) and China (18 per­cent).

In Italy, organic agri­cul­ture grew by 4.5 per­cent, bring­ing the total share of organic farm­land to almost 20 per­cent of the coun­try’s agri­cul­tural land.

Permanent crops, includ­ing olives, cof­fee, cocoa and nuts, accounted for 6.8 per­cent of the global organic farm­land.

The report states that organic olive cul­ti­va­tion sur­passed 825,000 hectares world­wide in 2023.

Over the past decade, organic olive cul­ti­va­tion has grown by nearly 200,000 hectares, mark­ing a 32 per­cent increase.

However, the report indi­cates a 3.1 per­cent decline in 2023 com­pared to 2022, with 26,572 hectares of olive farms aban­don­ing organic prac­tices.

This trend has been observed across mul­ti­ple crops in var­i­ous regions, includ­ing the European Union, despite the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) offer­ing more fund­ing and oppor­tu­ni­ties for organic farm­ers than ever before.

According to the Italian organic asso­ci­a­tion FederBio, the decline in the E.U. can be attrib­uted to the grow­ing bureau­cratic bur­den affect­ing both farms and national insti­tu­tions.

“Many com­pa­nies no longer see the incen­tive mech­a­nism as an oppor­tu­nity to seize but rather as a tight net­work of vol­un­tary com­mit­ments that add to the bind­ing require­ments of the new envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy,” FederBio said.

The asso­ci­a­tion high­lighted that European farm­ers’ wide­spread protests in 2024 stemmed from mul­ti­ple fac­tors, includ­ing a shift­ing per­cep­tion of the E.U.‘s envi­ron­men­tal and agri­cul­tural poli­cies.

“Many farm­ers have begun to per­ceive this strat­egy as hos­tile, feel­ing it puts them on trial rather than rec­og­niz­ing their role as stew­ards of the land and the envi­ron­ment,” the asso­ci­a­tion noted.

“The E.U. has been accused of rais­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity stan­dards with­out ade­quately con­sid­er­ing the fea­si­bil­ity of cer­tain reg­u­la­tions and the bal­ance between envi­ron­men­tal ambi­tion and pro­duc­tive real­i­ties,” FederBio added.

The protests have prompted Brussels to revise cer­tain aspects of the CAP, but it is still too early to deter­mine their impact on organic farm­ing.

According to FIBL/IFOAM, Spain remains the global leader in organic olive farm­ing, with 292,868 hectares, fol­lowed by Italy (215,791 hectares) and Tunisia (153,233 hectares).

Notably, global organic prod­uct sales reached €136.4 bil­lion in 2023, a sig­nif­i­cant rise from €15.1 bil­lion in 2000.

The United States remains the largest mar­ket for organic prod­ucts, with sales total­ing €59 bil­lion. The E.U. is sec­ond, with €46.5 bil­lion.

The report reveals that while organic agri­cul­ture is prac­ticed in 188 coun­tries, only 75 have fully imple­mented it with spe­cific reg­u­la­tions.

In the E.U., organic agri­cul­ture now cov­ers 11 per­cent of all farmed land, total­ing 19.5 mil­lion hectares. The E.U.’s Green Deal and Farm-to-Fork strat­egy aims to increase this to 25 per­cent by 2030.

Australia remains the global leader, with 53 mil­lion hectares ded­i­cated to organic farm­ing, while Oceania, with 53.2 mil­lion hectares, accounts for 54 per­cent of all organic farm­land.

In North America, organic farm­land cov­ers 3.3 mil­lion hectares, rep­re­sent­ing 3.4 per­cent of total agri­cul­tural land.