Italy
Italy is a success story in organic production, taking advantage of favourable climate and agronomic conditions and close geographic access to major markets. Organic farming has been growth in Italy rapid and the domestic organic market is taking off. Relatively high financial support for organic producers has played an important role in the rapid development of production. The Italian market is worth nowdays 3 billion EUR, and continues to grow: the domestic expense for organic products grew by 12.1% in 2010 vs. 2009, thus strengthening the positive trend of the past two years (+6.9% in 2009, +5.2% in 2008). This market involves almost 50 thousand operators and over 1.1 million ha of organic crops, worth US$ 51 billion in the world and growing by 10 to 20% every year. These numbers bear evidence of a significant and booming economic sector.
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