The r ole o f o rganic f arming i n f ostering Euro-Mediterranean i ntegration

Organic farming was born from the need to distinguish its products from the conventional ones in the framework of satisfying an increasingly requiring and evolved market and guaranteeing to consumers the absence of polluted and contaminated products. All these reasons explain the widespread success and development of organic farming, especially in developed countries. Organic products currently account for around 1% of the world’s market and about 3% in Europe, and the organic surface is nearly 4% of the total UAA. Despite this modest market share, over the last few years, organic productions have experienced a strong evolution in the setting up of the adopted cultural practices, in the implementation of its regulation and in the improvement of the consumers’ appreciation. Its spread interested not only the European countries, or the industrialized ones, but also most of the lesser developed countries, including the Mediterranean countries that started perceiving the role played by organic farming in fostering the economic growth and the integration of markets with the European countries. Such a chance was underlined on the occasion of the Euro-Mediterranean Conference of the Ministers of Agriculture, held in Venice in 2003, during which the participants witnessed a shared commitment to an integrated development of organic farming, boosting the economic growth, guaranteeing food security and protecting natural and environmental resources. In the Mediterranean basin, given the existence of climatic conditions being unfavourable to the development of plant diseases and the common use of extensive techniques already present in the traditional agricultural production, many countries were under the influence of favourable market mechanisms and therefore started setting up certification procedures for the recognition of the organic produce in order to reach or better improve the economic value of productions.