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Agriculture: Romania has the most wine farms in the EU, but also the smallest
Romania had 844.015 vineyards in 2020, equivalent to 37,9% of the 2,2 million vineyards that existed throughout the European Union, Eurostat data shows on Friday.
The large majority of the vineyards in the EU are very small, 83.3% of them having a surface under one ha. This is valid especially in Romania, where a vineyard is, on average, 0.21 ha, the smallest surface in the EU and over six times smaller than the European average which according to Eurostat is 1.43 ha.
As a total, the European Union had in 2020 over 2.2 million vineyards which cultivated 3.2 million ha (out of which 180,000 ha in Romania) the equivalent of 45% of the world surface cultivated with vine.
Spain, France and Italy make up three quarters (74.9%) of the vineyards in the EU and approximately two fifths (38.7%) of the EU vineyards.
Between 2015 and 2019, the vineyards in the EU were relatively stable as surface, with a drop of only 1.1%. In exchange, the number of farms dropped significantly with 257,000 farms, the equivalent of 10.3%. Among the member states, the most important drop was recorded in Portugal (where the number of farms dropped by 98,000), Italy (where 78,000 farms were lost) and Spain (where 34,000 farms were lost).
The Eurostat data show that the EU vineyards are relatively old, as vineyards older than 30 years represent a little over a third (36.7%) from the EU vineyards and another two fifths (41.3%) are between 10 and 29 years old.
The percentage of the vineyards older than 30 is high in Bulgaria (68.8%), Romania (65.7%) and Cyprus (64.7%). As for Romania, the process of replacement of the old vineyards is much over the EU average, as 12% of the total of the vineyards are younger than three years.
The large majority (82.4%) of the EU vineyards were dedicated in 2020 to the production of grapes for quality wine. In the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Slovenia, all farms are specialized on the production of quality wine. Only in Romania, the great majority (72.1% in 2020) of the vineyards are dedicated to the production of table wines.