Brussels, 10/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - Real agricultural income per worker increased by 1.9% in the European Union of the Fifteen in 2000, essentially because of the continued reduction in the volume of agricultural input, according to estimates published by Eurostat. In the euro zone, agricultural income rose by 2.3%. Although the situations vary considerably from one country to the next, Eurostat nevertheless notes that agricultural income was higher than the 1999 level in eleven Member States: Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria and France. The range of the increase was very broad, as the highest growth rates were in Finland (24.8%) and Denmark (23.8%), whereas the lowest was in France (1.3%). Agricultural income fell in four Member States: Sweden (-1.1), Italy (-2.8%), the United Kingdom (-8%) and Portugal (-9.3%). "in most of the countries where income increases were recorded in 200", Eurostat stresses, "agricultural income remained still below or close to the 1995 levels".
Livestock farmers better off than crop farmers
Livestock farmers benefited from a notable recovery in prices (+6.2% in real terms). The strongest increase was recorded for pigs (+ 24%), after strong declines in the previous two years. Producer prices for poultry, sheep, goats and other livestock as well as for eggs, however, also showed a clear improvement on the previous year. However, with prices plummeting towards the end of the year, real prices for beef production remained stable. On the whole, the real value of animal output rose by 4.9%, resulting from price increases and a slight fall in the volume of production (-0.9%) and a small increase of the net subsidies on animal products (+0.1%).
Crop farmers not only yielded slightly lower volumes (-1.2%), but also faced notable declines in the real terms prices of their products (-2.9). On average, net subsidies on crop products rose slightly (+2.2%), mitigating somewhat the real-term decline in values (-3.3%).
Determined largely by France, Italy, Germany and Spain, the value of crop output fell in these four countries, with the sharpest fall being in Italy (-6%). Most other Member States also recorded lower output values, especially Portugal (-14.8%), the United Kingdom (-9.3%) and Austria (-6.7%). Only three Member States recorded increases: Finland (12.3%), the Netherlands and Belgium.