Organic farming has more than doubled its share of European agricultural land since 1998, AP QUOTED the EU statistics agency Eurostat as saying Tuesday. Organic food producers also got an extra shot in the arm from EU farm ministers who agreed Tuesday on guidelines that determine what can and cannot be labeled as organic. Demand for food produced without artificial pesticides or fertilizers has been growing strongly in recent years as Europeans seek guarantees that what they eat is free of added chemicals, following food scares and worries over new biotechnology. The 15 nations that joined the European Union before 2004 _ mostly in Western Europe _ increased organic farmland from 1.8 percent of all land under the plow in 1998 to 4.1 percent in 2005, Eurostat said. Italy had the largest area under organic production in 2005 with 1.1 million hectares, followed by Germany and Spain with 0.8 million hectares. Britain, at 0.6 million hectares, scraped ahead of France at 0.5 million hectares _ even though France has far more farmland. The EU's 25 members in 2005 had 6.1 million hectares of organic farmland, Eurostat said. The average size of these farms tended to be double the norm at 39 hectares for an organic holding compared to 16 hectares for the average farm. The biggest organic farms are found in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Britain, it said. Under the new rules agreed Tuesday, an EU-wide organic logo can now be added to food if at least 95 percent of the ingredients are organic. EU Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said it would help EU consumers understand what exactly they were buying. «Organic food is a successful and growing market and I hope that this new set of rules will provide the framework to allow this growth to continue _ through a combination of market demand and the entrepreneurship of European farmers,» she said.
