Researchers at Washington State University conducted a study analyzing 40 years of science, comparing organic and conventional farming across the four sustainability goals identified by the National Academy of Sciences: productivity, the economy, the environment and the welfare of the community.
It follows that it's possible that the nutrition of a global growth population is also sustainable. The review of hundreds of published researchs in fact provides the evidence that organic farming can produce sufficient returns, be profitable for farmers, protect and improve the environment and is safer for farm workers.
The study, "Organic farming in the 21st century", confirms the overall numbers of the sector: in 2014 the turnover of the business sector exceeded - globally - 60 billion euro. Europe has increased by 7.6% to €26 billion by placing targeted the United States, the largest market with a consumption of 27 billion. Concerning that the area cultivated in the European Union the 6% is organic with Italy stands out with about 11% of agricultural area cultivated with organic methods.
If in terms of organic area emerges Spain (1.7 million hectares), Italy takes over the leadership of extension of productive crops with 1.4 million hectares of land cultivating cereals, olives and vines. "Who is pulling against has for a long time argued that organic farming is inefficient, requiring more land to produce the same amount of food - declares Aiab, the Italian association for organic agriculture -. The review instead describes the cases where the returns in bio may be greater than conventional methods of cultivation." [1]
