|
|
Biofach:
The Worlds largest organic fair, Biofach in Nürnberg, has a tradition to set extra focus on a specific country every year. This country is announced to be Country of the Year (Land des Jahres). In 2009 Denmark got this title. It was however not the first time Denmark has had this position. Until recently Country of the Year was often elected to a country who in the the same year hosted a larger IFOAM-conference or event, and since Copenhagen hosted the IFOAM conference and the socalled First Organic World Expo in 1996 it was natural for Biofach to announce the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland) to be countries of the year in february 1997. Often the position Country of the Year is misunderstood to be an honour for the most organic country or for a country which have been taking special initiatives. However today it is most often a deal between the organizers of Biofach and a country that wants to boost their organic export and therefor gets extra exhibition area on Biorfach. Also in 2008 it was the intention that Denmark should be Country of the Year on Biofach. The government even had given a special subvention for the event, but the organic companies said "no". The Danish domestic market for organic food had developed so fast in a longer period that the companies had very little goods to export. For this reason the NürnbergMesse decided to cancel Country of the year in 2008 and set extra focus on organic wine instead. Organic.dk has found which countries of each Year had the title of Country of the Year - shown in the table on this page. We thank the organizer of the first Biofach's Hubert Rottner, the former general secretary of IFOAM Bernward Geier, the organizer of IFOAM'96 Rikke Lundsgaard and Ellen Rascher from NürnbergMesse for their help. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
