Spain leads the national area devoted to organic farming

Most of the Andalusian area with organic farming goes to livestock uses (82 per cent of the total), and is dedicated to the use of pastures, grasslands and fodder, as well as forests and wild collection. 18 Percent of the remaining area, about 155,000 hectares, is dedicated to agricultural uses, especially for crops such as olives, cereals and nuts that concentrate 80% of the activity. In this sense, Aguilera underlined that Andalusia is the Spanish region which dedicated more surface to the Green olive grove (31 per cent of the total), while in the rest of the country this crop is of average 22,21 per cent of the surface to organic production.

The number of operators, excels Almería, with 1.806, despite being one of the provinces that less surface has dedicated to the ecological production, something that reflects the "plot atomization and the transformative nature" of its operators thus incorporating greater value to their primary production.

Sectors that more companies brings together is the fruit and vegetables, with 122 distributed mainly by the provinces of Almería, Málaga and Granada and which represent an increase of 25% in 2009 connection to the previous year. The second important group corresponds to the olive grove, with 110 mills. It should be noted that in 2009 doubled the number of companies dedicated to canning and vegetable juices, while the envasadoras of fruit and vegetables have experienced a growth of 25%.

In this way, it will take into account when processing a request for aid some parameters such as the number of organic operators who will benefit, the volume of production expected, if the company is located in a protected natural area or if you are going to develop a new product in the market. "Must be paramount corporate initiatives aimed at the real needs of the market, and in the same way that in agro-industry subsidies we have always given more support to projects that help to realize the concentration of supply"", we have considered the need to strengthen public support for the organic sector as one of the advantages of future for the Andalusian countryside", recently explained the Minister of agriculture.

Department of agriculture will be materialized payments by a total of EUR 40.4 million. This money correspond to the execution of different lines of public aid managed by the Andalusian Government and which aim to facilitate the farmers the establishment and consolidation of ecological production techniques.

The most important budgetary amount is intended to the payment of agri-environmental measures relating to organic production. Since the beginning of the year, only by this concept, the producers have already received 18.8 million euros. Also during this year, the Ministry of agriculture and fisheries intends to transfer to farmers and ranchers ecological of agri-environmental measures for EUR 17.5 million.