Twenty-one new farms, whose main activity is organic farming, were installed or converted every day during the first six months of the year.
With the installation of 21 new organic farms per day between January and June 2016, this kind of production has recorded an “historic rate of growth”, commented Florent Guhl, the director of Agence bio (French agency for the development and promotion of organic farming agency), at a press briefing held on Wednesday 21st September.
Twenty-one new farms, whose main activity is organic farming, were installed or converted every day during the first six months of the year.
With the installation of 21 new organic farms per day between January and June 2016, this kind of production has recorded an “historic rate of growth”, commented Florent Guhl, the director of Agence bio (French agency for the development and promotion of organic farming agency), at a press briefing held on Wednesday 21st September.
The sector now has 31,880 producers, i.e. a 10% increase in the number of farms going organic since 2015. And the total area of organic agricultural land is set to pass the 1.5 million hectares mark “between now and the end of the year”.
With an increase of 20% compared with 2015, the value of the organic market is expected to reach 6.9 billion euros in 2016. To provide the producers with better support, the organic agency announced, furthermore, that, together with the state agencies France-Agrimer (Agriculture and Fisheries) and Inao (the organisation responsible for controlling product origin and quality), it is considering the creation of a farm price and margin formation observatory, even though “for certain key products, such as milk, a price observation system already exists and the results could be released in 2017”.