With the financial support of the European Commission's, Agriculture and Fisheries specific RTD programme (FAIR3), a team under the co-ordination of the Universität Hohenheim (Germany) has collected detailed information on organic farming. The data collection started in 1993 when Member States had implemented Regulation (EEC) N° 2092/91 and which also represents the first year in which regulation (EEC) N° 2078/92 started to have an impact on organic farming, although it was not fully implemented until 1996. Data collection is only a part of a wider objective to provide an assessment of the impact of the CAP-reform and possible policy developments on organic farming.

The data available from the University of Aberystwyth has been collected in the framework of this research project. Some methodological comments on the data collected by the study need to be mentioned, since they obviously affect the overall quality of the analysis.

The figures cover organic or in-conversion farms and land certified according to the procedures in EC 2092/91, but also certified under any other state or private bodies not included in 2092/91, for example because of the lack of an EU regulation for livestock use. In Germany, livestock-only enterprises are not included in (EEC) 2092/91, but an independent holding AGÖL (the German umbrella organisation of producer associations) collects data from certified production. The data included in the tables cover livestock-only holdings, but all AGÖL members do not certify all holdings under (EEC) 2092/91. There is a degree of overlap between the two data sets. In Greece, no organic livestock production is recognised.