Four Countries Produce More Than Half of Europe's Farm Output
Silver Data Lab Research Desk · Statistical analysis · Published on 16 May 2026
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- Data source
- Eurostat
- Reference period
- 2025
- Last updated
- 05 September 2026
Key estimates
- EU agricultural output was worth 541.7 billion euro at basic prices in 2025.
- France produced 88.1 billion of it, 16.3% of the Union's total.
- France, Germany, Spain and Italy together account for 56.5% of EU agricultural output.
- Adding Poland and the Netherlands brings six Member States to 72.1%.
- The Netherlands produces 39.3 billion euro of output — nearly twice Romania's — on a fraction of the land.
Where Europe's food is produced
The economic accounts for agriculture value everything the sector produces at the prices farmers receive. For the European Union in 2025 that came to 541.7 billion euro.
The distribution of it is concentrated. France produces 88.1 billion, Germany 76.4 billion, Spain 73.2 billion and Italy 68.2 billion. Those four Member States together account for 56.5% of the Union's agricultural output.
Add Poland at 45.3 billion and the Netherlands at 39.3 billion, and six Member States account for 72.1%. The remaining twenty-one share just over a quarter.
The Dutch case
The Netherlands is the entry that does not follow from size. It is a small country — roughly 41,000 square kilometres, a twelfth of France — and it produces 7.3% of the Union's agricultural output, more than Romania and Greece combined.
Dutch agriculture is concentrated in horticulture, greenhouse production and intensive livestock, all of which generate high output value per hectare. Where French or Polish agriculture is extensive and covers a large area, Dutch agriculture is intensive and covers a small one.
That comparison is the reason a ranking of output value should not be read as a ranking of agricultural land, of employment or of environmental footprint. Those rank differently, and two of them are covered separately on this site.
What concentration means and what it does not
A concentrated output distribution is what one would expect from a Union whose members differ enormously in size. France's 16.3% share sits against a population share of about 15%, which is close to proportionate.
The observation worth making is not that the large producers are large. It is that the Union's food supply rests on a small number of national agricultural systems, each with its own weather, its own dominant crops and its own exposure to a bad year. France and Spain are neighbours and produce 29.8% of EU output between them, so one weather system can put close to a third of it at risk at once. The twenty-one smallest producers come to almost the same share, 27.9%, but they run from Ireland to Cyprus, and losing it would take twenty-one separate bad years.
Reading the figures
These are values, not quantities. An output figure rises when farmers receive higher prices as well as when they produce more, and 2022 and 2023 saw sharp movements in both agricultural input and output prices.
For year-on-year comparison the volume measures in the same accounts are the appropriate series. For the question this study asks — how EU farm output is distributed between Member States in a given year — the value measure is the right one.
Value of agricultural output, 2025
| Country | million euro |
|---|---|
| France | 88,099 |
| Germany | 76,449 |
| Spain | 73,209 |
| Cyprus | 885 |
| Luxembourg | 634 |
| Malta | 135 |
What these figures cannot tell you
- Values move with prices
- Output is measured in euro at the prices farmers received. A country's figure rises when prices rise as well as when production does, so these values should not be compared across years as if they were quantities.
- Absolute size, not intensity
- This ranking measures total output, so large countries rank high. It says nothing about output per hectare, per worker or per euro of input, and the Netherlands is the clearest demonstration that those rank very differently.
- Basic prices exclude product subsidies
- Output at basic prices excludes taxes on products and includes subsidies on products. Support paid to farmers as direct income payments rather than on products does not appear here at all, so this is not a measure of farm income.
- Agricultural output is not food supply
- The accounts cover what is produced in a country, not what is consumed there. Trade moves a large share of it across borders, and several of the largest producers are also large importers.
Frequently asked questions
- Which EU country produces the most agricultural output?
- France, at 88.1 billion euro in 2025, or 16.3% of the EU total. Germany follows at 76.4 billion, Spain at 73.2 billion and Italy at 68.2 billion.
- How much is EU agriculture worth?
- 541.7 billion euro of output at basic prices in 2025. That is the value of what farms produced, measured at the prices farmers received, and it excludes direct income support paid to them.
- How concentrated is EU farm production?
- France, Germany, Spain and Italy together produce 56.5% of EU agricultural output. Adding Poland and the Netherlands brings six Member States to 72.1%, leaving just over a quarter for the remaining twenty-one.
- Why does the Netherlands produce so much?
- Dutch agriculture is intensive rather than extensive — horticulture, greenhouse production and intensive livestock generate high output value per hectare. The Netherlands produces 7.3% of EU agricultural output on about a twelfth of France's land area.
Methodological note
The economic accounts for agriculture value agricultural output at basic prices in millions of euro at current prices. This study uses the total agricultural output item, which combines crop output, animal output and agricultural services.
Values are for 2025 and cover all 27 Member States. The EU figure published in the source is exactly the sum of the 27 national values, which was verified at the extraction date.
The shares of the EU total held by individual Member States, by the largest four and six producers, by France and Spain together and by the twenty-one smallest producers are computed by Silver Data Lab from the published values and are labelled as derived.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser. The filters below are the ones applied.
Economic accounts for agriculture - values at current prices
aact_eaa01
- Filters applied:
- freq=A · indic_agr=PRD_BP · unit=MIO_EUR · am_item=AM160000 · time=2025
- Extracted:
- 2026-08-11
- Source last updated:
- 2026-05-13
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