Number of farmers in Organic Farming Scheme grows to 5,700
There are now 5,700 farmers participating in the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS), according to latest figures highlighted by Bord Bia
Speaking at Bord Bia's Meat Marketing Seminar (Friday, January 17) beef and livestock sector manager, Joe Burke, said: "The number of producers we have seen participating in the OFS has increased threefold over the last three years.
"We have now surpassed 5% of Irish agricultural land being farmed organically."
He acknowledged that over the last two years, "many of the producers participating have been still in their conversion period".
Out of the total number of farmers participating in the OFS, 52% are cattle farmers and 40% are sheep farmers.
By January 2025, Burke said that 84% or 2,184 cattle farmers have full-organic status and 77% or 1,504 sheep farmers have full organic status.
The table (below) details the number of farmers participating in the OFS since 2020:
| Year | Number of farmers in the OFS |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 1,523 |
| 2021 | 1,734 |
| 2022 | 2,020 |
| 2023 | 4,000 |
| 2024 | 5,000 |
| 2025 | 5,700 |
Bord Bia's organic sector manager, Emmet Doyle, also told the audience at the Meat Marketing Seminar that the organisation has recently commenced its three-year EU co-funded campaign for organic beef and lamb across four key markets.
"We believe this has the potential to support growth of Irish organic beef and lamb over the coming years in Germany, the Nordic markets, Austria and France," he added.
The initiative was first launched in September 2024.
But Burke also highlighted some of the challenges the sector faces.
"There have been reports of some additional leakage of organic weanlings and store cattle particularly last autumn given the increase that we saw in the prices being paid for conventional weanlings and store animals."
"Those producers were competing aggressively for the supply of organic animals in marts.
"So there are some reports of an increase in that leakage figure which had been previously in decline but we saw that increase to close to 30% in the case of those organic livestock sales."
He added that this has also been an issue in the case of lamb and emphasised that "this will be an area of greater focus for the entire sector through the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine led organic steering committee in 2025.
"All stakeholders are going to continue to focus on this key area of maintaining the organic status of animals within the supply chain," Burke said.
