The potential of the organic market is huge. To operate successfully in importing organic products to Switzerland and the European Union, it is crucial to have accurate information on market access conditions.

For this reason, the Swiss Import Promotion Programme (SIPPO) – a programme which is carried out by Osec, the official Swiss foreign trade promotion agency – and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) have jointly published a manual which is aimed at facilitating the access for developing and transitional countries to the European market for organic products.

An increasing number of producers, food processing and retailing organizations as well as consumers are becoming aware of the benefits of organic farming and its resulting products. The worldwide market for organic products is growing which can be demonstrated by the following facts and figures. More than 37 million hectares of land is now being used for organic farming. The turnover of organic products worldwide has more than doubled due to increasing demand between 2003 and 2009, rising from 25 to 55 billion US dollars. After the USA Europe the second largest market for organic products in the world.

Facilitating market access

The Swiss Import Promotion Programme (SIPPO) – a programme which is carried out by Osec, the official Swiss foreign trade promotion agency – and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) have jointly published the manual “The Organic Market in Europe” with the aim of providing information to and promoting the development of developing and transitional countries that want to export organic products to Europe. Across about 150 pages the handbook offers a wide range of information about the organic market in the EU and EFTA countries as well as a comparison of the EU Organic Standards and Bio-Suisse Regulations. In this way, the manual should help producers from developing and transitional countries to gain improved access to the organic market of the EU and EFTA countries.

The manual is available to download from SIPPO
A printed version can be ordered free of charge from FiBL: www.fibl.org/de/shop.html