Which regions are focused on cereals and milk production?

Cereals and milk are key agricultural products in the EU. The value of total cereal production in the EU was €64.4 billion in 2021 and that of milk was €58.0, the 2 products contributing just under 30% of the value of total agricultural output. 

Castilla y León produced the highest value of cereals

There were 10 regions classified at level 2 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 2) that produced cereals valued at more than €1 billion in 2021. 

The EU region that produced cereals with the highest value in 2021 was Castilla y León in Spain (€2. 3 billion). This was closely followed by the Centre-Val de Loire region in France (€2.2 billion). Among the other 8 regions that produced cereals valued at over €1 billion in 2021, 4 more were in France (Champagne-Ardenne, Pays-de-la-Loire, Picardie, and Poitou-Charentes), 2 in Romania (Sud-Est and Sud – Muntenia), a single region in Lithuania (Vidurio ir vakaru Lietuvos regionas), and another region in Spain (Aragón).

Farming in some regions was particularly oriented towards cereals production, even if they were not the largest cereals producing regions. There were 4 regions where the value of cereals production was at least 40% of the value of their total agricultural output. Among them, 3 were in Bulgaria - Severozapaden (53.7%), Severen Tsentralen (47.6%), Severoiztochen (44.5%), and 1 in France - Île de France (42.8%).

Source dataset: agr_r_accts 

There were an additional 17 EU regions where the share of the value of cereals in total agricultural output ranged from between 30% and 40%. In broad terms, most of these regions were grouped on the eastern side of the EU, from Bulgaria (1 region) through Romania (2 regions), Hungary (4 regions), Slovakia (2 regions), Czechia (3 regions), to Lithuania (1 region). However, there were also regions in France (another two regions),  Spain (1 region) and Denmark (1 region) that were relatively focused on cereals production. 

Southern Ireland produced the highest value of milk 

Farming in other regions of the EU was more oriented to milk production. The region that produced the highest value of milk in 2021 was Southern in Ireland (€2.4 billion), which was followed by Bretagne in France (€2.0 billion), and Lombardia in Italy (€1.8 billion). An additional 5 regions generated milk to the value of at least €1 billion: Pays-de-la-Loire and Basse-Normandie in France, Weser-Ems and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and Galicia in Spain.

There were also other regions where dairy farming and the production of milk was the key type of farming, even if they were not the biggest producers. There were 8 regions where the share of the value of milk production was at least 40% of the value of total agricultural output in 2021: Friesland in the Netherlands (47.3%), Região Autónoma dos Açores in Portugal (46.0%), Franche-Comté in France (45.6%), Southern region in Ireland (43.5%), Salzburg and Vorarlberg in Austria (43.5% each), Pohjois- ja Itä-Suomi in Finland (42.7%), and Cantabria in Spain (41.3%).

Source dataset: agr_r_accts

In another 14 regions, the share of the value of milk production was between to 30% and 40% of the value of total agricultural output. These regions were in Germany (6 regions), the Netherlands (3 regions), Sweden (2 regions), Austria (1 region), Spain (1 region), and in France (1 region). 

This article presents just a handful of information made available by the release of regional data on economic accounts for agriculture which were collected with reference 2021 for the first time under legal basis.