From the Foreword by Luks Kilcher, FiBL\ud
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More than thirty-seven million hectares of agricultural land are managed organically by nearly 1.8 million producers. About one-third of the world’s organic land – 13.4 million hectares – is located in emerging markets and markets in transition. Global sales reached 55 billion USD in 2009, more than doubling in value from 25 billion USD in 2003. Europe is after the USA the second largest organic market in the world with a turnover of 26 billion USD in 2009. These figures increase year by year and such facts impressively illustrate the powerful development of the organic production and market all over the world. Behind these figures lie a large number of benefits and impacts, which are the motor for this development: organic agriculture is the choice of millions of farmers, as it aims to produce healthy food while establishing an ecological balance to prevent soil fertility and pest problems. \ud
With this edition, FiBL and SIPPO are presenting The Organic Market in Europe for the third time. Compared to the previous editions, this edition expanded considerably in geographical scope, now including the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway and the new EU countries Czech Republic and Poland. The information on regulations, the statistics and market trends collected and compiled in this manual provide a guide with the most important information to successful market access in EFTA and EU countries. However, it can’t claim to be complete in all aspects, as especially market data are still scarce. The market data of this manual are therefore based on a mixture of statistics, estimations and experts opinions.\ud
This manual has three parts: Part A provides an overview on the organic market in Europe. Part B includes the four EFTA member states Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, giving Switzerland a more detailed look as it is one of the most developed organic markets in the world and also the home-base of the manual editors. \ud
Part C includes ten EU member countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The annex contains a comparison of the European and Swiss organic regulations, including Bio Suisse standards. Useful links, addresses and references are listed at the end of each chapter