EU organic farming grows, but targets lag; Spain and France show varied trends while Czech Republic maintains a high share.
đź”— Read the article on denikreferendum.cz
[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]
Ecological agriculture in the European Union reached 17.7 million hectares in 2023, an increase of nearly four percent year-on-year, though it is not on track to meet the Green Deal’s goal of covering twenty-five percent of agricultural land by 2030; current trends suggest only fifteen percent coverage by the end of the decade. Austria leads EU countries in ecological farming area share at 27.3 percent, followed by Estonia and Portugal. In Spain, rapid growth is linked to consumer demand for healthy products, with traditional methods being renewed to reduce reliance on synthetic chemistry. France saw a decline in ecologically managed land in 2023 due to large producers switching back to conventional farming amid falling consumer interest in organic goods. The Czech Republic has a relatively high share of ecological farmland at seventeen percent of the total agricultural area, but this is heavily concentrated in permanent grasslands and mountainous regions, with large farms dominating production, necessitating efforts toward more balanced crop representation and support for small and medium-sized farms.
