(15 December 2015) – According to first estimates, real agricultural income in the European Union (EU) has fallen by 6.0% in 2015 compared with 2014, while agricultural labour input has dropped by 1.8%. As a result, real agricultural income per worker in the EU has decreased by 4.3% in 2015.
Compared with the previous year, the highest increases of the real agricultural income per worker are expected in Croatia (+21.5%), Latvia (+14.3%), Greece (+12.1%), France (+8.8%) and Italy (+8.7%), and the largest decreases in Germany (-37.6%), Poland (-23.8%), Luxembourg (-20.0%), Denmark (-19.7%), the United Kingdom (-19.3%) and Romania (-19.2%).
Compared with 2014, the value of EU agricultural output in 2015 is estimated to have decreased by 2.5% in nominal terms, mainly due to a marked fall in the value of animal production (-5.9%) and a slight decrease in the value of crop output (-0.3%), combined with a decrease for input costs (-2.4%).
EU agricultural input costs (intermediate consumption) are estimated to have decreased by 2.4%, mainly due to significant reductions for energy & lubricants (-10.1%) and animal feeding stuffs (-3.7%). The fall in the price of feeding stuffs as an input is a reflection of the decrease in the producer price of several cereals.