Farm-Gate Prices Are Two Fifths Above Their 2020 Level in the EU, and Two Thirds Above It in Ireland

The price at the farm gate

Eurostat's index of agricultural output prices tracks what farmers are paid for what they sell: cereals, milk, livestock, fruit and vegetables, weighted by each country's own mix of production. It is a producer price, measured before processing, transport and retail add their margins, and it is the farmer's side of the food inflation that households have been living through since 2021.

Against a base of 100 in 2020, the EU index stood at 141.09 in 2025. Over five years the prices farmers receive rose by a little more than two fifths.

Where the rise was steepest

Ireland records 165.62 and Hungary 165.06, the two highest indices in the Union and the only two above 160. Poland at 152.93 and Slovenia at 152.20 follow, then Romania at 149.81, Luxembourg at 148.50, Sweden at 147.92, Portugal at 146.66, the Netherlands at 146.53, Greece at 145.85, Estonia at 145.84 and Spain at 145.65. Fourteen Member States are above the EU index.

The list mixes countries whose farm prices rose in a period of high general inflation, as in Hungary, Poland and Romania, with countries whose sectors are dominated by products whose prices moved most. Ireland's output is three quarters animal goods, so its index follows livestock and dairy prices rather than crop prices.

Where it was gentlest

Denmark at 126.02, Cyprus at 127.34, Malta at 129.20 and France at 129.81 are the four Member States below 130. Lithuania at 134.69, Finland at 134.71, Czechia at 135.50 and Bulgaria at 135.57 come next. Germany, at 139.60, sits just below the EU figure; its value is provisional.

A rise of a quarter in five years is still a rise of a quarter. No Member State's farmers were being paid less in 2025 than in 2020, in money terms.

In real terms, three countries went backwards

Eurostat also publishes the same index deflated by each country's harmonised index of consumer prices, so that a farm-gate price can be read against the cost of everything else. On that reading the picture changes.

Lithuania's real index is 95.52, Czechia's 97.11 and Estonia's 98.50: in those three countries the prices farmers receive rose by less than consumer prices did, so a farmer's output bought less in 2025 than in 2020. Latvia at 100.32, Bulgaria at 101.11 and Romania at 103.58 are barely ahead. Hungary's nominal index of 165.06 becomes 107.37 once inflation is taken out, a difference of 57.69 points, the widest in the Union and the clearest case of a farm-price rise that was mostly a general price rise.

At the other end, Ireland's real index of 137.53 is the highest in the Union, followed by Luxembourg at 122.96, Slovenia at 121.74, Portugal at 121.68, Sweden at 120.29 and Greece at 120.21. In those countries the rise at the farm gate outpaced inflation by a clear margin.

Five geographies are absent from that comparison. For Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Slovakia, and for the EU aggregate, the archived extraction carries the same value under the real index as under the nominal one, which a deflated series cannot do over a period of rising consumer prices; those five real values are therefore not used here.

The other side of the accounts

An output price index says what farmers were paid per unit, not what they earned. Eurostat publishes a second index on the same 2020 base for what farming buys — feed, fertiliser, energy, seed, veterinary services — and reading the two together is the nearest this data comes to a margin.

Across the EU that input index stood at 131.98 in 2025 against the output index's 141.09. Prices at the farm gate ran a little ahead of costs. Beneath the aggregate the two sides part company.

Ireland is first on output and first on this comparison too: 165.62 against inputs at 127.17, the widest distance between the two anywhere in the Union. Hungary is the opposite case. Second on output at 165.06, its input index is 166.80, so its costs rose marginally more than its prices — the extraordinary nominal rise is neither a real rise nor a margin. Lithuania is the sharpest squeeze of all: output 134.69 against inputs at 153.78. In three Member States, Hungary, Slovakia and Lithuania, costs outran prices.

Lithuania is worth a second look, because it sits at the bottom of both readings. It is the one Member State where farm-gate prices lost ground to consumer prices and to the cost of farming at the same time.

None of this is income. Neither index counts volumes, subsidies or investment, and the distance between two price indices is not a profit.