Lithuanian Organic Agriculture in the Context of European Union - Organic Agriculture Towards Sustainability - page 107

Lithuanian Organic Agriculture in the Context of European Union
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/58352

Evaluating cattle's density in 2012 there were established 0.25 livestock units per hectare in
conventional agriculture and 0.2 livestock unit per hectare in organic agriculture. The organic
milk productivity made 5.52 tons of milk per cow in 2011 while conventional milk productivity
made 4.90 tons of milk per cow. Accordingly, milk productivity of organic cows was higher
by 12.6% compared it with the milk productivity of conventional farm cows.

Year

Certified organic animal
groups

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Animal number (heads)

Dairy cows 3048 4988 6401 7962 8489 8382 8891 8887 9544

Suckler cows 623 14 1071 1507 1915 2252 2863 3359 4086

Bull breeders 22 29 54 68 86 107 117 134 156

Calves 2923 6255 8662 10427 10605 11262 12752 14082 16798

Horses 190 277 321 386 441 488 364 447 474

Goats 321 549 668 740 869 755 586 640 751

Sheep 3789 5052 8507 10561 10768 13001 13683 14276 18307

Pigs 83 266 200 275 203 279 523 474 453

Rabbits 1093 908 369 239 70 215 185 141 69

Cervidae - - - - - - - 582 752

Poultry 890 1182 344 1121 1100 1510 2709 4406 4103

Table 4. Certified organic livestock (animal number, heads) and its dynamics during 2004-2012 in Lithuania. Source:
Ekoagros.

Organic livestock as a share of all livestock showed that, with respect to cattle, pigs and sheep,
some Member States using organic methods were producing remarkably large numbers of
animals, cattle and sheep being the most popular (Figure 22) [19]. In Austria 25.7% of the sheep
were reared using organic production methods, but organically reared cattle also achieved a
noteworthy 17.7% share, the highest in the whole EU-27. Estonia had the highest percentage
of the sheep population with 47.3%. Lithuania reached the second highest percentage of the
sheep population with 27% in 2008 (Figure 22) while till 2012 it increased by 70% (Table 4). As
for organically reared pigs, they accounted for less than 1% in most of the Member States
(Figure 22) [19].