Conclusion

Agriculture has always been, and will continue to be in this "hi-tech world", an extremely valuable source of raw materials for all kinds of non-food products. Agricultural products have the advantage of being a flexible source of material, particularly with annual crops, as well as renewable and versatile. The non-food market offers farmers the opportunity to diversify their operations and therefore adopt a wider range of more sustainable - economic and environmental - agricultural practices. Plant and animal breeding and genetic engineering are making possible the development of many new products from agriculture. The major challenge in this increasing use of agricultural raw materials for non-food products is to overcome the obstacle of production costs in order to make the products competitive on the market.