Rückumstellung von ökologischer auf konventionelle Wirtschaftsweise

In spite of the growing market for organic food and a generally growing number of organic farms, there are several farmers who drop out of organic agriculture each year and revert to conventional farming methods. This paper presents an overview of the extent of this phenomenon in Germany and characterizes the reverting farms. For this, statistical data as well as the results from a German wide survey amongst reverted farmers were analysed. The statistical data show that about 3.3% of all organic farms drop out of organic certification each year, which corresponds to 2.7% of the organic acreage. Farmer’s reasons for reversion are manifold and usually a combination of reasons applies in each case. Nevertheless, the data show that economic reasons as well as dissatisfaction with the certification and control procedures play a major role in most cases, whereas problems with production techniques were usually not crucial regarding the decision to revert.