EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Organic Food Helps Revive Fortunes of Europe's Farmers
BRUSSELS - The organic revolution is sweeping across Europe, with the area of land dedicated to environmentally-friendly, pesticide-free food production more than doubling in the last decade.
Organic farming now accounts for more than 4 per cent of agricultural land in the EU, more than double its 1998 share, according to a new report from its official statistics agency, Eurostat.
And organic land is likely to make greater inroads, as the consumer appetite shows no sign of slowing.
"Organic almost certainly will continue to grow and we think it's a good thing," Michael Mann, an EU agriculture spokesman said.
The growth is partly being driven by Europe's farmers, who are being undercut by produce imported from countries such as Brazil. For many farmers, organic foods are becoming a key way to reinvent their failing farms.
"Farmers are coming under growing pressure from low-cost producers abroad," Mr Mann said. "They have to be smart and think of increasing profit margins and organic is one way of doing that."
Conscious of this ballooning market, agriculture ministers from the 27 member states agreed this week on a compulsory logo, to be introduced from 2009, designed to reassure consumers that they are getting the genuine article.
The logo guarantees that at least 95 per cent of ingredients are completely free of chemicals - and imports will be subject to the same rule. But it also permits up to 0.9 per cent from genetically-modified organisms, a level that has angered green campaigners.
"It is a total cop-out by the European Union - setting a level of 0.9 per cent could result in the creeping GM contamination of organic food," said Ben Ayliffe, of Greenpeace. "It should be 0.1 per cent."
"Go into any supermarket and they are bursting with organic food, while GM foods are conspicuous by their absence. That's because consumers don't want them!" he added.
In recent years, European consumers have shown themselves willing to pay more for organic produce, reflecting an aversion to chemicals and a growing preference for natural farming techniques over the high-intensity production that has been blamed for crises such as BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.
Recognising this fact, Brussels will now provide higher levels of subsidy for organic farming, than that given to non organic fruit and vegetables.
The UK has been a leader in organic farming. In 2005, more than 600,000 hectares of the country's farmland were cultivated organically, putting it ahead of France, a country more than twice its size. Yet only 3.8 per cent of UK farmland was devoted to organic production, compared with 11 per cent in Austria. The Alpine nation has a reputation as a strong opponent of intensive and biotech farming, recently refusing to follow an EU ruling allowing a type of genetically-modified maize made by Monsanto.
While the Eurostat report primarily compared the 15 nations that joined the EU before 2004, it also pointed out that some of the biggest organic farms now are to be found in newcomers Slovakia and Czech Republic.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
4 Comments so far
Show Allregarding the photo accompanying this article - mother cow contentedly doing what moms do with their offspring - the message is that going organic, as it relates to the consumption of meat, represents a healthful alternative and a humane treatment of animals. with all due respect to those converting livestock production and/or dietary habits to certified organic, out of respect for resourse conservation, health benefits or ethical concerns, some inconvenient truth remains. animals raised for food, organic or not, constitute the single largest commitment of resources to food production, the largest disparity of nutient value invested in feeding them over what is obtained in consuming their flesh, a perpetuation of the myth that one NEEDS meat in their diet at all to maintain health, a disregard of the many health complications directly tied to a diet high in animal products and a profound disrespect to the animal kingdom as a whole - seeing it merely as a utilitarian means of fulfilling our sense of taste, a vehicle for our pleasure, with no ultimate value beyond our casual use. folks, there is almost nothing you could do that would be better for the environment, better for humanity as a whole and your own physical/spiritual wellbeing than changing your relationship with animals - seeing them not merely as a food source to exploit, but as sentient and intelligent beings deserving profound love and respect. as they also have the capacity for feeling pleasure and pain, we have much in common. one major difference - animals are incapable of speaking up on their own behalf. and thus this is a role we should provide for them.
if there is little in the way of other food sources available, and you belong to communities which have traditionally included animals as a means to survive, then that relationship is different, and should be respected. i write here more about the millions of us in this country who have the choice. look carefully at attitudes surrounding food, taste, pleasure, habit, and what it would take to change, if only in some small way. if many do this, it would make a radical difference.
This is good news. Eventually all farming will be organic.
All those pesticides cause F up our bodies & the environment. Today's scientific tools are very primitive in comparison with those that will be in a hundred years.
Everyone should permanently boycott non-organic foods for the good of your body and the environment.
------------------------------------
10 Reasons to Buy Organic
1. Protect Future Generations
Children receive four times more exposure than adults to cancer- causing pesticides in food.
2. Prevent Soil Erosion
Three billion tons of topsoil aer eroded from crop lands in the US each year, much of it due to conventional farming practices, which often ignores the health of the soil.
3. Protect Water Quality
THe EPA estimates that pesticides pollute the primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.
4. Keep Chemicals Off Your Plate
Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms, and can also be harmful to humans.
5. Protect Farm Worker Health
Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms, and can also be harmful to humans.
6. Save Energy
More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the US.
7. Help Small Farmers
Although more and more large scale farms are making the
conversion to organic practices, most organic farms are small, independently-owned and -operated family farms.
8. Support a True Economy
Organic foods might seem expensive; however, your tax dollars pay for hazardous waste clean up and environmental damage caused by conventional farming.
9. Promote Biodiversity
Planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, but the lack of natural diversity of plant life has negatively affected soil quality.
10. Flavor & Nourishment
Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil,
producing nourished & nourishing plants. Conduct your own taste test!
---
source: whole foods
---
"Until mankind can extend the circle of his compassion to include all living things, he will never, himself, know peace." Albert Schweitzer
Organic farming can save the planet. It relies on diversity of other species and is suited for small farms and manual labor, not for agribusiness. Conservatives have redefined "organic" to include non-organic, big business produced animal and vegetable products. We cannot rely entirely on the FDA labeling.
If anybody is interested in finding out what Cuba is doing about Peak Oil check out www.communitysolution.org/cuba . I think you'll find it interesting because they've been there and done that.