Organic production in Italy: a scenario analysis and legislative aspects

In this paper a worldwide, European and national scenario analysis of the organic production is presented. Specifically, considering the renewed consumer demand, the Authors investigated if the number of the organic operators is in line with the increasing availability of these products. Moreover, in order to capture the possible spread of the biological diversity of the Italian territory in 2000-2007, the analysis considered the three main geographical macro- areas: North, Central and South. The analysis of these phenomena is based on the time series of official data available from the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry (Mipaaf) and the national information system on organic farming (SINAB). These data are updated to 2008. The findings reveal that the South area play an important role in organic operators developing. In fact, considering the average contribution on organic operators increasing of the geographical macro-areas, the South area has the 60%, the highest percentage among the other areas, followed by North 23% and Central 17%. Finally, the results suggest that the South area trusted on the organic sector and this is a strength to the economic development of the region and to fill the gap with the other national areas.