From Niche to Market: the Growth of Organic Business in Italy

In last decade the organic agriculture has steadily increased, especially in EU countries where many scandals have boosted organic food consumption. Italy is still the first EU country as organic land and farms but Italian organic consumption is lower than other EU members. Actually, the Italian organic agriculture growth has been accomplished by EU grants which have moved organic market out of its niche size. More recently, supermarket chains have also shown a growing interest for organic market, but export still accounts for a great share of Italian organic production. The growth of organic agriculture has been investigated at the micro-level showing organic farm structure and organization features such as size, type of production, technology employed, and farmers characteristics such as age, education, etc., using Census data. Results about organic agriculture in the Veneto Region show that competitiveness of organic farms is strictly associated with EU grants.