EU launches organic farming campaign

[S.Annadana]

// 29 jul 2008

Through a EU wide campaign, the European Commission hopes to give consumers more information about what organic farming and food production means. The campaign kicked off on Monday.


Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said: "Consumer demand for organic products is growing, offering increased business opportunities for all sectors of the food supply chain."

More organic producers
The number of organic operators (farmers, producers, processors and importers) in the EU-25 grew by 13.4% since 2004, to 182,305. In recent years, the European organic retail market has experienced strong growth of between 5 and 30 percent, depending on the country, the Commission says.

Logo and website
The Commission also announced a competition to develop a new organic farming logo. The centrepiece of the Commission's campaign will be a new multilingual website for organic farming, providing an electronic 'toolbox' that provides marketing materials in 22 languages free of charge to professionals from the food and farming sector.