Estimating Supply and Demand of Organic Seeds in Europe Using Survey Data and MI Techniques

Abstract

The lack of sufficient information about organic seed production and use is among the key factors affecting the development of the organic seed market in the EU. Currently, only very basic organic seed market data are being reported at the country level. Those available from each member state are seldom comparable over time between countries and sometimes even within one country. This study provides the first overall statistics on European organic seed supply and demand. Estimates of the organic seed demand and supply of twelve important crops in EU organic agriculture are provided by developing and testing innovative approaches to improve data collection and analysis, such as multiple imputation (MI) techniques to estimate missing values. The estimates are based on data extracted from official EU datasets from 2014 to 2018 and collected by an online survey of 756 farmers, as well as various expert assessments across the EU. The results were provided by four EU geographical regions, with a specific focus on wheat, lucerne, carrot, and apple. Although strong sector and regional differences currently characterise the organic seed market, organic seed demand considerably exceeds supply for most crops. Generally, farms in the central and northern regions revealed a higher organic seed supply than those in the southern and eastern regions, and organic seed supply is higher for wheat than other crops. A significant output of this study is the development of recommendations to improve methodologies to increase the transparency and availability of organic seed market data.