How to improve collection on organic agriculture in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe

Annually, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL collects data on key indicators of organic agriculture in European Union such as area, production and trade data among national data sources (for trade data) and Eurostat (for area, production and operator data; Eurostat 2018). Data are compiled in a MySQL database, and quality checks are carried out following the ORMACODE of the EUfunded OrganicDataNetwork (OrganicDataNetwork et al 2014), much of which is based on Eurostat’s Statistics Code of Practice (Eurostat 2011). Checks include the comparison against the previous year, the neighbouring countries, and the overall total. In case of inconsistencies, data providers are asked for clarification. FiBL publishes the data annually in collaboration with IFOAM – Organics International in a statistical yearbook (Willer & Lernoud 2018)