Share of utilised agricultural area under organic management
- Eurostat dataset
- org_cropar
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- % of utilised agricultural area
Key estimates
- Highest value: Estonia at 22.6 % of utilised agricultural area; lowest: Albania at 0.07 % of utilised agricultural area.
- Cross-country mean 9.22 % of utilised agricultural area, standard deviation 6.34, coefficient of variation 68.8% across 32 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: +68.7% on a constant panel of 29 countries.
How far has organic conversion actually progressed? Eurostat dataset org_cropar reports share of utilised agricultural area under organic management for 32 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The organic area share is a certified, audited statistic, unlike most self-declared sustainability metrics.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Estonia (22.6), Portugal (21.2), Italy (19.5), Switzerland (18.3), Sweden (16.7), all expressed in % of utilised agricultural area. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Albania (0.07), North Macedonia (0.33), Türkiye (0.63), Malta (0.77), Serbia (0.83). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 322.57, while the median country reports 8.77 % of utilised agricultural area against a mean of 9.22 % of utilised agricultural area.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 6.34 % of utilised agricultural area, giving a coefficient of variation of 68.8%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 29 countries reporting in both periods moved by +68.7%. The largest relative increases are observed in Malta (+1183.3%), Ireland (+314.2%), Portugal (+299.8%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in North Macedonia (-59.8%), Norway (-12.2%), Sweden (+1.0%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 16.6 % of utilised agricultural area. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset org_cropar ('Organic crop area by agricultural production methods and crops'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-07-16. Filter dimensions: crops=UAAXK0000; unit=PC_UAA; agprdmet=TOTAL. Unit of measure: % of utilised agricultural area. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (32 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.