ABSTRACT
Organic agriculture is developing rapidly, and statistical information is now available from 138 countries of the world. Its share of agricultural land and farms continues to grow in many countries. According to the latest survey on organic farming worldwide, almost 30.4 million hectares are managed organically by more than 700’000 farms (2006). This constitutes 0.65 percent of the agricultural land of the countries covered by the survey (see chapter on the main results of the global organic survey 2008 and corresponding tables in the annex). In total, Oceania holds 42 percent of the world's organic land, followed by Europe (24 percent) and Latin America (16 percent). Currently (as of the end of 2006), the countries with the greatest organic areas are Australia (12.3 million hectares), China (2.3 million hectares), Argentina (2.2 million hectares) and the US (1.6 million hectares).
