Chennai: Organic agricultural-products exports from India could take off in a big way provided the industry, the government and the NGOs' come together to work and support farmers in their organic farming endeavours in a major way, according to Export-Import (EXIM) bank of India.

A paper on the prospects of organic foods export published by the bank says, "The Indian farmer needs a great amount of such support especially during the difficult transition from conventional to a more sustainable and eco- friendly variety of agriculture."

The paper further says that, given the traditional practices followed by small farmers, the Indian agricultural products are known to be more organic than in most developed countries. India also has the added advantage of having a growing season round the year.

However, growers in India have not been able to take advantage of the export of potential of Indian organic agricultural products mainly because of the rigours of certification, prohibitive costs of inspection and certification and lack of testing and processing facilities.

The worldwide markets for organic foods are expanding with the three major markets - Europe, US and Japan recording annual growth rates of 15 per cent to 30 per cent in the past five years according to the paper. .

Quoting International Trade Centre (ITC) projections, the paper says that the organic market size in the year 2010 would be around 46 billion USD in European Union, $ 45 billion in US and $ 11 billion in Japan.

PTI