Organic food and farming research in Italy: a review by Italian Ministry of agriculture and forestry policies(MIPAF)

Summary

In Italy, as in other countries, Organic Food and Farming (OFF) research suffers of a very high fragmentation being carried out by many public research institutes, Universities and private centres. In more recent years, due to the increasing relevance of OFF within national rural development programmes strong efforts have been addressed towards an improvement of the efficiency of the fundings distribution, the research system and its activity reorganization, and a reduction of overlapping initiatives.
A view on projects and institutions currently working on OFF research in Italy is presented, mainly focusing on the available public financial instruments and the main projects funded by MIPAF. Most of the Italian research projects investigates plant production subjects, some actions are involving animal production, animal health and welfare and environmental aspects. To face the problems of the transferring and exploitation of knowledge and research results to OFF system, some actions have also been taken up as the “National Information System on organic farming”, (www.sinab.it), financed by MIPAF. Futhermore, recognizing the need to coordinate research efforts also at transnational level, MIPAF is now one of the 11 partners of the CORE-Organic Coordinated Action, started in October 2004, cofinanced by the UE Commission. This Coordinated Action could represent a very powerful tool to strengthen the future National and International research actions and cooperation.