Organic Farming in Latin America and the Caribbean

ica Latin American agriculture is in a state of flux, and it is becoming increasingly interesting for many farmers to produce organically. Some see organic agriculture as a way to live, to produce and to main-tain ancient Latin American agricultural traditions and to obtain a better in-come. Other farmers or companies see organic agriculture as a good business opportunity, to market fresh or proc-essed products locally or export them. Profitability is, however, not the only motive to produce organically; there are farmers that consider organic agricul-ture as an alternative in order to main-tain and protect their local resources and avoid damage to the environment or mitigate climate change, and others are trying to integrate social aspects. For example, with participatory certifi-cation systems, farmers ' organizations can reduce certification costs, and in addition build relationships with the local consumers. Consequently, con-sumers feel the need to support such farmers to produce organically. Figure 33 shows that organic agricultural land production jumped from about 5 million hectares to about 6.4 hectares from 2006 to 2007, representing approximately one percent of the total agricultural area for Latin America. The high increase in organic land is partl