Features
The hills are alive
There are various countries where organic farming and growing have taken off. Italy, Austria, Poland, Denmark and Cuba are some of the more obvious and well documented cases and stakeholders in Ireland can learn from the experiences of these countries.
One I've only noticed recently was right under my nose - Wales. Technically a Principality, but with its own assembly, Wales has 22,000 farmers. Eighty percent of Welsh farming is livestock-based and average farm size is 41 hectares. Their organic story is most impressive. Wales has seen organic farming's land area grow from 0.3% to over 6% in the last ten years. This astounding figure is usually masked in the overall UK figures, so it is often overlooked. But by any objective standard, this growth rate is massive.
Ready market
Not only is it an encouraging story; it gets more encouraging the closer you look. A new report, which had a very high response rate, finds relatively positive sentiment amongst organic farmers and growers in Wales, with only 4% considering giving up, 16% planning to expand and 58% planning no change. These generally positive figures are no surprise, considering that virtually all finished livestock, milk and eggs found their way into the organic market in 2007. Wales now has 17% of all UK organic diary and beef cattle, and 37% of the UK's organic sheep. Only store lamb farmers found it hard to find an organic premium at point-of-sale.
So what has Wales been doing right? For one thing, gaining its own representative assembly must surely have helped. This at least allowed Wales to develop its own rural policies, separate from wider UK policies and preferences. An example of this is the strong GM regulations the Assembly has brought in recently, which impose a polluter pays principle stricter than elsewhere in the UK. Actions such as this can give organic farmers confidence that they won't end up in a Percy Schmeiser-type situation - i.e. engaged in long running disputes with GM companies over 'using' patented GM seeds, while at the same time claiming to be unknowingly contaminated and severely disadvantaged by these seeds.
Organic plan
According to Sue Fowler of the Organic Centre Wales, "the assembly has been genuinely supportive. It saw that there was a huge interest in organics - Wales was a place where organic pioneers farmed in the 1970s - but the numbers of certified organic farmers was quite low. There was lots of interest but not enough information for those who wanted to go organic. It saw a gap and started working on it almost immediately. The assembly started implementing action plans, funding places like this centre. It also streamlined payment and bureaucracy, which had been getting a bad press".
Along with this, the Assembly could tap into the fact that Wales also has a different geography to most of England, and in many cases organic farming suits Welsh farming conditions. The mountainous aspect of much Welsh farming makes it difficult to use agri-industrial inputs such as synthetic fertilizers, while at the same time suiting extensive livestock farming of sheep and cattle.
In 1998 the first of their organic action plans was written when less than 5,000 hectares was fully certified organic. Their second organic action plan aims to increase organic farming to between 10 and 15% of the entire farmland of Wales. What's more impressive is the fact that they actually seem to be on target, which isn't necessarily the case everywhere there is an organic action plan. The current action plan recommends the following:
- Environmental payments should continue in the form of conversion aid
- Developing the market
- Developing new processing and marketing opportunities
- Public education
- Research into market intelligence
- Declaring Wales GM free
- Minimise the administrative load on farmers.
This latter point must sound like sweet sweet music to the ears of farmers in Ireland. Horticulture has been targeted, as it has been elsewhere. However, the Welsh authorities have, literally, put their money where their mouth is - fully converted organic horticulturalists get paid £50 per hectare more than those in conversion - £200 as oposed to £150.
Centralised support
The establishment of the Organic Centre Wales has also been a great help.
Established in 2000 and based at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the centre's remit was extended in 2003 to encompass public education, public procurement, policy and strategy development. In this, it could be said to act almost like a mini department of organic agriculture.
The centre's success is its targeted farming focus, and in particular the good institutional relations it maintains with various relevant key stakeholders. It is in fact run by a partnership of four organisations actively involved in organic farming research and knowledge transfer in Wales: ADAS consulting, Elm Farm Research Centre (EFRC), the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) and the Institute of Rural Sciences at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (IRS).
It is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, Farming Connect and the European Union, under a programme for European regions that are lagging behind.
The centre is very focused, well supported and has an expert staff of nine fulltime dedicated researchers, marketing strategists, trainers, educators and advisors. Producers and policy makers alike are advised through the work of the Centre. Many of these, such as Nic Lampkin, take the lead at EU level on organic farming policy and research.
Good research
Research into organic farming in Wales in general is of a very high level. Wales has been singled out at EU level precisely for the success of their research tools, in particular the tools used to assess organic farming support schemes. This in turn has allowed for good communications between policy/funding and those more on the ground in Wales - it has also helped maximise the most targeted and suitable of the available funding.
According to organic researchers based in Wales, areas of concern, such as they are, include the following: developing more reliable statistics; concern about supply-demand balance; farm gate prices only just covering costs; better prices for producer groups; developing the range of marketing options and better consumer promotion. The second and third of these points relate specifically to store lamb production.
What can we in Ireland learn from this?
Do we need targeted, more institutionally supported organic farming research and development? IOFGA's manifesto for the development of the organic sector 2007-2012, calls for these sorts of supports. This is particularly the case for the first three manifesto points on a development agency, increased budget and development plan.
Should we aim to play to our agri-strengths in our various regions? While organic beef is a growth area in Ireland, growth rates simply don't compare to Wales. What about hill farmers in Ireland as an area for the organic sector to focus on? Because of the National Parks and Wildlife Services' Commonage Framework Plans and their general farming conditions, these farmers operate very much in an organic style anyway. Should we target these regions and these producers in a more concentrated fashion?
Active implementation of organic action plans, and paying the converted more than those converting to horticulture would also be both interesting and mostly likely successful.
Institutional opposition
There is another issue, however. Research across Europe suggests that it is sometimes the case that where conventional farming is weak, organic farming has space and opportunities to blossom. There may be a related element of this in the Irish situation, where the conventional lobby is so powerful that organic sometimes seems otherworldly.
This is more difficult to overcome - the IFA, for example, play a minor role in the organic sector in Ireland. Likewise, it seems only recently, and then in the case of fairly large scale producers, that farming advisors are positive about going organic. What are sometimes called the institutional interrelationships between organic and conventional sectors are weighted towards the conventional in Ireland. This institutional interrelationships idea (Michelson, 2001) suggests that there are three institutional environments: pure competition, creative conflict and pure co-operation. We aren't even at the creative conflict stage yet, though with Trevor Sargent as the relevant minister, rising prices for agri-industrial inputs and processes and improving consumer sentiment, we may start to creep towards this creative conflict stage. Then the fun will really begin.
As Ghandi said: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win…
Gillian Westbrook has been appointed to the new position of
General Manager with IOFGA. Coming from a background in the regulatory area...
From liammacdomhnaill@yahoo.com