New insights into organic farming in Germany - empirical results of a survey in 218 farms

A comprehensive description of the recent structure, performance and developments of organic farming in Germany does not exist. Because of this gap the Institute of Organic Farming and the Institute of Farm Economics of the German Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL) have carried out an interdisciplinary empirical analysis of the state of the art of Organic Farming in Germany in 2002-2003. In addition to the status-quo-analysis an important function of the study was to establish a long lasting research-organic farming-network. Farm economists, organic crop production specialists, organic livestock specialists and sociologists are member of the scientific network. 218 randomly chosen farms throughout Germany have been surveyed in 2002/2003. The survey was carried out with face-to-face interviews including closed, open-ended and open response-option questions. Up to 15000 variables per farm have been gathered. In this paper the major findings of the survey are described.