2023 saw a slight increase the quantity of potatoes harvested in the EU compared to 2022, according to the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat.
According to Eurostat, there were 48.3 million tonnes of potatoes harvested in the EU last year, slightly higher than the 47.5 million tonnes harvested the year before.
However, Eurostat drew attention to the large-scale reduction of 36.7% in EU potato production in the last 24 years; the 2023 figure was 27.9 million tonnes less than in 2000.
At a per-country level, Germany was the largest producer of potatoes in the EU in 2023 (11.6 million tonnes, 24% of the EU total), followed by France (8.6 million tonnes, 17.9% of the total) and the Netherlands (6.5 million tonnes, 13.4% of the total).
These three countries combined accounted for the majority of the harvested production of potatoes in the EU in 2023, making up 55.4% of the total.
Ireland, for its part, produced just over 336,000t of harvested potatoes in 2023, the 15th-highest figure among EU member states.
Despite the slight increase in potato production in 2023, Eurostat’s latest statistical release on the sector also pointed out the relatively small number of organic potato farms in the EU.
Although figures for the last three years were not available, 2020 figures show that, of the just over 1 million farms in the EU that produced potatoes, only about 25,000, or about 2.5%, produced potatoes according to organic methods.
Eurostat
Other recently-released statistics from Eurostat for 2023 show that Ireland was the fifth-highest among EU member states in exports of ice cream to non-EU countries last year.
EU countries exported 261 million kilogrammes of ice cream to non-EU countries in 2023, worth a total of €1.04 billion, Eurostat’s figures show.
The quantity of exports increased by 5% compared to 2022, which saw 249 million kilogrammes exported.
France accounted for a fifth of the total EU exports, exporting 52 million kilogrammes in 2023 to non-EU countries, accounting for 20% of EU exports.
This made it the largest ice cream exporter in the EU, ahead of the Netherlands, with 35 million kilogrammes, or 14% of EU exports; Germany, with 29 million kilogrammes, or 11% of EU exports; Italy, with 28 million kilogrammes, or about 11%; and Ireland, with 24 million kilogrammes, accounting for 9%.