The EU's agricultural industry generated a value of € 177 billion last year

The EU's agricultural industry generated an estimated gross value added of € 177 billion in 2020. Last year, the agricultural sector contributed an estimated € 171.9 billion to the EU's gross domestic product (GDP), which is 1.3 percent of the Union's total. In comparative terms, it was only slightly less than Greece's GDP. This follows from data published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The total value of agricultural production in 2020 was estimated by Eurostat at 411.8 billion euros, of which about half (52.8 percent) came from crops, of which 14 percent from vegetables and garden plants and 11.2 percent from cereals. Less than two-fifths of the total value was from animals and animal products (38.6 percent), of which most were 13.1 percent from milk and 9.6 percent from pigs. The rest consisted of agricultural services and inseparable non-agricultural activities. Agricultural income per annual work unit (AWU) in the EU in 2020 was estimated to be 1.5 percent lower than in 2019. This slight decline at EU level included lower agricultural incomes for five of the seven largest farmers. In Italy, the decline was -4.9 percent, the Netherlands had -5.1 percent, France -7.6 percent, Romania -13.8 percent and Germany the most up to -14.6 percent. However, most Member States recorded an increase in this index in 2020. The largest increases were recorded in Lithuania (+ 30.2 percent), Croatia (+13.2 percent), Spain (+13.0 percent) and Hungary (+11.6 percent).