Organic farmers represented only 2% of EU-15 producers in 2003 and their share has remained unchanged in the past years, recent statistics have shown. Organic farms reached a meagre 3.8% of total European cultivated land in 2002.
The figures were published by Eurostat one year after the Commission presented a "European action plan for organic food and farming" designed to boost smaller-scale sustainable production in a highly intensive European agricultural sector.
The plan included a list of 21 measures including marketing campaigns and support programmes to farmers as well as training and research.
It remains to be seen what effects the plan will have but the figures published by Eurostat for the period 1998-2002 suggest even continued growth will keep organic farming at modest proportions.
According to Eurostat, the surface of agricultural land devoted to organic farming has more than doubled in five years, reaching 3.8% of the total utilised agricultural area in 2002, up from 1.8% in 1998. Some member states, led by the UK (75%) and Greece (49.6%), showed impressive annual growth rates in organic farm land over the period from 1998 to 2002.
But the strong growth figures in some countries do little to hide the delays in the member states with the largest agricultural sectors. With the exception of Italy - which has the EU's highest number of producers and hectares, - agricultural heavyweights such as Spain and France remain laggards. Although they have roughly doubled their share since 1998, the proportion of land dedicated to organic farming remained small in France (2%) and Spain (3%) in 2003. For its part, Italy grew from a 4% share in 1998 to about 8% in 2003.
