Excerpts from the BioFach Newsletter March 31, 2002.

21 % growth of organic farming in France

The share of organically farmed land in France grew from 1.5 to 1.7 % in 2002. 509,000 ha (previous year 420,000 ha) are meanwhile available for organic farming. According to information from Agence Bio, the number of farms has increased by 8 % to 11,177. There was also an appreciable growth of 21 % in cattle farming, which will not reduce the problems of the present organic milk surpluses in some EU countries. A government development plan of December 1997 had provided for an organic area of 1 million ha for the end of 2002.

Organic are in Spain grows by 37 % in 2002

Andalusia is turning into the region with the largest registered area of organic farming, followed by Extremadura. In terms of processors, however, Catalonia is the leader with 262 of the altogether 1,204 companies, followed by Andalusia with 214 processing companies. A total of 665,055 ha were farmed
organically in Spain in 2002, compared with 485,079 ha the year before. The turnover achieved by the total of 16,521 producers and 1,204 processing companies was estimated at 172.9 million euro. However, not only the area under cultivation has grown. The underlying data show that industrial
activities are also growing strongly in organic farming - in terms of plant and livestock production. The number of processors increased by 31 % in the last trading year.