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Census of Agriculture 2020 Detailed Results

Organics

Organic farms refer to both fully converted organic farm holdings and farm holdings under conversion to organics. Statistics on how land is utilised and the number of heads of particular categories of livestock on these farm holdings are presented. It should be noted that this chapter is based on farm holdings that are above at least one of the physical farm holding thresholds as described in Annex 2 of the integrated farm statistics Regulation (EU) No. 2018/1091. See the background notes for more information.

Organics - Land Utilisation

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In 2020, there were 1,686 organic farm holdings, representing 1.3% of all farm holdings.
The number of fully converted organic farm holdings was 1,540, just above 91% of all organic farm holdings.
Organic Agricultural Area Utilised (AAU) accounted for 73,799 hectares (ha) of the 4,498,987 hectares in the state, or 1.6%.

Table 1.1 Number of organic farms and area under organic farming, 2020
	Organic Farms			All Farms
	Fully Converted	Under Conversion	Total	All Farms
Number of Farms	1,540	146	1,686	130,216
AAU (hectares)	67,321.7	6,477.2	73,798.8	4,498,986.9

Open in Excel: Census of Agriculture Final 2020 Table 1.1 (XLS 10KB)

X-axis label	AAU (ha)	Number of Farms
Permanent Grasslands	56732.59	1459
Temporary Grasslands	13823.1	612
Cereals	2615.82	209

There were 70,556 ha of organic grassland in 2020, just below 96% of the total organic AAU.
The remainder of the organic AAU was in cereals (2,616 ha) and other crops (627 ha).

Table 1.2 Number of organic farms and area under selected organic crops, 2020

X-axis label	Grass	Cereals	Other
Border	98.79	0.096	0.25
West	98.65	1.02	0.33
South-West	98.07	1.55	0.38
Mid-West	96.06	3.57	0.37
Midland	92.36	5.94	1.7
South-East	86.74	10.49	2.77
Mid-East & Dublin	84.82	12.26	2.92

Over 98% of organic AAU was grassland in the Border, West and South-West regions in 2020.
Organic grassland accounted for over 90% of organic AAU in the Midlands (92.4%) and Mid-West (96.1%) regions.
The Mid-East and Dublin, and South-East regions were the only regions where cereals accounted for more than 10% of organic AAU in 2020; 12.3% in Mid-East and Dublin, and 10.5% in the South-East.

Table 1.3 Number of organic farms and area under organic grassland and cereals by region, 2020

Organics - Livestock

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X-axis label	Heads of livestock	Number of Farms
Cattle	51685	1157
Sheep	74870	378
Poultry	161471	101

There were 51,685 organic cattle on 1,157 farm holdings in 2020, 5.5% of these were dairy cows, 34.1% were other cows and 60.4% were other cattle.
There were 74,870 organic sheep in 378 flocks in 2020. This represented 1.4% of sheep in the state.
There were 161,471 organic poultry recorded in 2020. Which represented 1% of poultry in the state. 81.1% of organic poultry were laying hens.

Table 1.4 Number of farms with organic livestock, 2020

X-axis label	Northern and Western	Southern	Eastern and Midland
Cattle	17415	19967	14303
Sheep	28013	30532	16325
Poultry	121598	29062	10811

The Southern region (NUTS2) recorded the most cattle and sheep in 2020 at 19,967 and 30,532 respectively.

The Northern and Western region had the most poultry at 121,598 heads.

Table 1.5 Number of farms with organic livestock by region, 2020

Organics - Other Characteristics

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There were 1,686 farms that had organic livestock or organic AAU on the holding. The farm type, economic size (standard output), farm size, gender and age of holder breakdowns for those farms are given below.

X-axis label	< 10 ha	10 - 20 ha	20 - 30 ha	30 - 50 ha	50 - 100 ha	100 + ha
Size of Farm	86	197	282	575	453	93

Over 60% of the organic farm holdings in 2020 were sized between 30 - 50 ha (34.1%) or 50-100 ha (26.9%).
A third (33.5%) of organic farm holdings in 2020 had less than 30 ha of AAU.
In 2020, 5.5% of the organic farm holdings had AAU of 100 ha or more.

Table 1.6 Number of organic farms by farm size, 2020

X-axis label	Percentage
Specialist Beef Production	59.8
Specialist Sheep	13.8
Mixed Grazing Livestock	8.8
Mixed Crops and Livestock	4.7
Other	4.2
Specialist Tillage	3.9
Specialist Dairying	2.4
Mixed Field Crops	2.4

The following farm type categories each had less than 5% organic farm holdings; Mixed Field Crops (2.4%), Specialist Dairying (2.4%), Specialist Tillage (3.9%), Other (4.2%) and Mixed Crops and Livestock (4.7%).

Specialist Beef Production and Specialist Sheep farm types accounted for just below three quarters of the organic farm types in 2020, 59.8% were Specialist Beef Production and 13.8% were Specialist Sheep.

Table 1.7 Number of organic farms by farm type, 2020

X-axis label	Number of Farms
Less than €4,000	102
€4,000 – €8,000	155
€8,000 – €15,000	369
€15,000 – €25,000	423
€25,000 – €50,000	396
€50,000 – €100,000	157
€100,000 +	84

The middle three Standard Output bands (€8,000 -- €15,000, €15,000 -- €25,000 & €25,000 -- €50,000) accounted for over 70% of organic farm holdings in 2020.

There were similar proportions of organic farm holdings in the highest (€100,000 +) and lowest (Less than €4,000) Standard Output bands, 6% of organic farm holdings in the lowest band and 5% in the highest band.

Table 1.8 Number of organic farms by economic size, 2020

X-axis label	Number of Farms
Male Holders	1393
Female Holders	293

82.6% of organic farm holdings had a male holder. Similar to the proportion of male holders of all farm holdings, which was 86.6%.

The median age of holders of organic farms was 54 in 2020 while the median age of farm holders of all farms was 57.

Table 1.9 Number of organic farms by gender of farm holder, 2020

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Table 1.3 Number of organic farms and area under organic grassland and cereals by region, 2020
Region	Number of Farms		'000 hectares
Region	Grassland	Cereals	Grassland	Cereals	Total Area¹
State	1,957	209	70,555.7	2,615.8	73,798.8

Northern and Western	633	32	28,536.6	287.4	28,908.1
Border	301	14	12,477.6	121.2	12,629.9
West	332	18	16,059.0	166.2	16,278.2

Southern	695	91	28,625.8	1,100.3	29,950.0
Mid-West	289	28	10,644.8	395.8	11,081.8
South-East	118	40	4,004.5	484.1	4,616.5
South-West	288	23	13,976.6	220.3	14,251.8

Eastern and Midland	629	86	13,393.3	1,228.1	14,940.7
Mid-East and Dublin	125	37	4,565.2	659.8	5,381.9
Midland	504	49	8,828.1	568.2	9,558.8
¹ Total Area includes area under other organic crops.

Census of Agriculture 2020 Detailed Results

Organics

Organics - Land Utilisation

Organics - Livestock

Organics - Other Characteristics

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Table 1.4 Number of farms with organic livestock, 2020
Type of Animal	Number of Farms	Heads of Livestock
Cattle	1,157	51,685
Dairy Cows	46	2,825
Other Cows	960	17,640
Sheep	378	74,870
Goats	18	78
Pigs	18	402
Poultry	101	161,471
Broilers	10	30,543
Laying hens	92	130,928

Table 1.6 Number of organic farms by farm size, 2020
Farm Size	Number of farms	%
Farm Size	Number of farms	%
< 10 ha	86	5.1
10 - 20 ha	197	11.7
20 - 30 ha	282	16.7
30 - 50 ha	575	34.1
50 - 100 ha	453	26.9
100 + ha	93	5.5
Total	1,686	100

Table 1.7 Number of organic farms by farm type, 2020
Farm Type	Number of farms	%
Farm Type	Number of farms	%
Specialist Tillage	66	3.9
Specialist Dairying	41	2.4
Specialist Beef Production	1,008	59.8
Specialist Sheep	233	13.8
Mixed Grazing Livestock	148	8.8
Mixed Crops and Livestock	79	4.7
Mixed Field Crops	40	2.4
Other	71	4.2
All Organics	1,686	100

Table 1.8 Number of organic farms by economic size, 2020
Standard Output	Number of farms	Percentage %
Standard Output	Number of farms	Percentage %
Less than €4,000	102	6.0
€4,000 – €8,000	155	9.2
€8,000 – €15,000	369	21.9
€15,000 – €25,000	423	25.1
€25,000 – €50,000	396	23.5
€50,000 – €100,000	157	9.3
€100,000 +	84	5.0
All Organics	1686	100

Table 1.9 Number of organic farms by gender of farm holder, 2020
Gender	Number of farms	%

Total	1,686	100
Male Holder	1,393	82.6
Female Holder	293	17.4