JUAN F. J. L, RICARDO J. S. L, SERGIO M. V.
Abstract
The increasing interest in the environment has led to a higher awareness for
the so-called ecological agriculture or organic farming, since this type of
production not only respects the environment but also meets the current consumer's
concerns on food health requirements.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the organic production systems in the citrus fruit sector can be configured as a competitiveness and development strategy for the sector within the current framework of the EU agri-environment and rural development policy, as well as within the evolution of the organic product market.
In order to develop the objectives, a comparative analysis of the economic feasibility of organic vs. conventional systems is performed for the two most important variety groups: mandarins and oranges. This implies the need to use methods of financial evaluation of dynamic investments, which take into consideration the value of money in time, because as it was mentioned, we are dealing with economic activities with a time prospect higher than one year.
The results obtained from the comparison of the Internal Rates of Return for variety groups of mandarins and oranges in organic and conventional crops reveal that, currently, in a period of preferential markets for organic citrus fruit, and saturated markets for the citrus fruit sector in general, in mandarins as well as in oranges, show the difference slightly higher of two percentage points. Conventional crops are still more favourable, although in the case of mandarins, with a Internal Rate of Return higher than orange crops, the difference between organic and conventional methods is reduced to 1.18 points.
Key Words:
agri-environment, citrus fruit, organic production, rural development policy
biomass