Organic Horticulture World-wide

Summary

This presentation summarizes the data on organic horticulture as collected in the framework of the survey on organic agriculture world-wide, carried out by IFOAM and FiBL annually. Horticultural crops include, fruits, vegetables, grapes, ornamental plants, furthermore coffee, cocoa, nuts and olives.
The data show that:
- At least 2.16 million hectares of organic horticultural crops were grown in 2008.
- This constitutes one percent of the world’s horticultural cropland of 200 million hectares.
- The countries with the largest areas of organic horticultural land are Mexico, Italy, and Spain. - For some of the countries with largest horticultural areas (China, India, Brazil) no information on the use of the organic land / crops grown is available.
- It may therefore be assumed that the organic horticultural area is higher than 2.2 million hectares.
Horticultural crops are among the most important products in the organic market place, particularly vegetables and fruit. In many countries the share of land used for horticultural products is higher than the overall organic share. Growth of the organic areas for horticultural crops has been higher than for the organic agricultural land since 2004, and growth is expected to continue in the future. For many developing countries the exports of organic horticultural crops are increasingly important.
However, there are a number of production constraints like insect, disease, and weed control challenges, but with more research and development progress can be expected.
It is important to improve data availability in the area of production, market and trade, so that developments can be better monitored - important for decision makers and market actors