Organic fruit and vegetables: consumption is set to grow by 13 per cent in volume by 2025; despite this growth, volumes will still be 5 per cent lower than in 2021, when they exceeded 625,000 tonnes; in value terms, however, the market stands at significantly higher levels than five years ago, partly due to an average price increase of around 20 per cent.
Looking at the long term, there is a gradual consolidation of organic produce in Italian shopping trolleys: in 2016 it accounted for 8.4 per cent of total fruit and vegetable volumes, whilst in 2025 the share will reach 12.2 per cent, the highest level in the series under consideration…
The benefits of the organic system for each player in the supply chain are, in fact:
Ecosystems
The decision to adopt organic farming methods generates measurable benefits for ecosystems. The most comprehensive systematic review available, conducted by 21 authors across 463 studies and 2,141 comparisons between organic and conventional systems in temperate climates, documents:
- lower nitrate leaching from the soil into aquifers (-26 per cent), the main cause of groundwater pollution;
- lower water contamination from plant protection products (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.) in 92% of the comparisons;
- greater biodiversity, as measured by various indicators (plant species, 95 per cent; earthworms, 78 per cent; birds, 35 per cent; pollinators, 23 per cent);
- a 45% reductionin energy consumption (Sanders et al., 2025; Dongo, 2025).
The review published by FiBL for the German Ministry of Agriculture confirms a 50% reduction in nitrates in groundwater and in energy consumption (Dongo, 2024a).
Farmers
For farmers, organic farming reduces dependence on external inputs and energy consumption, thereby reducing exposure to price volatility: according to the European Commission, organic farms save 75–100 per cent of the costs per hectare on plant protection products and 45–90 per cent on fertilisers compared with conventional farms and, despite yields being 5–30 per cent lower, they achieve a similar or higher income per worker, thanks to higher prices and dedicated EU support (European Commission, 2023).
An analysis by France Stratégie of six agroecological systems identified organic farming as the only system capable of guaranteeing, once conversion is complete, a margin of 25 per cent net of CAP aid (Strinati, 2020). Organic farms are also larger than average and run by younger entrepreneurs (European Commission, 2023).
In the 2023–2027 CAP strategic plans, organic farming is allocated around 19 billion euros, an average of 148 euros per hectare (European Commission, 2025). The Commission’s proposal for the CAP 2028–2034 sets aside at least €300 billion for farmers’ income support (European Commission, 2025a), but unfortunately does not allocate a specific share to organic farming: it is now up to the European Parliament and the Council to introduce it and, subsequently, to the Member States in their national and regional partnership plans.
Consumers
The benefits of organic farming for consumers include: a guarantee of the absence of synthetic pesticides, the minimisation of veterinary medicine residues in products of animal origin, food additives reduced to a minimum, and certified traceability at every stage, from field to shelf, with mandatory indication of the origin of agricultural raw materials on the label of all products. Official data confirm that in 2023, 80 per cent of the 7,074organicsamples analysed in the EU containednoquantifiablepesticideresidues, compared with 58 per cent of all samples, and only 0.9 per cent exceeded legal limits, compared with 3.7 per cent overall (EFSA et al., 2025).
A systematic review of 21 studies links the consumption of organic food to lower exposure to pesticides and areduced risk of cardiometabolic conditions, including obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure (Poulia et al., 2025). Severalscientific studies have also demonstrated a higher presence — in certain categories of organic foods, compared with conventional ones — of phenolic compounds and other phytochemicals, as well as health-promoting microorganisms (Dongo & Della Penna, 2021; Dongo & Ferrucci, 2019)…
