Organic News
New Organic Agency
Trevor Sargent T.D., Minister for Food and Horticulture has announced a new organic agency, An Foras Organách, to replace the National Steering Group for the development of the organic sector. The chairperson of the new body will be Noel Groome who is managing director of Groomes, a fresh produce company supplying retail outlets, which was featured in the May/June issue of Organic Matters.
The Minister said that he wants a change of emphasis from planning for the development of the sector to appointing individuals with expertise and specialist knowledge to help develop organic production. Despite the absence of concrete information on its makeup, the appointment of a new body has been greeted positively by the organic sector which saw little progress under the previous steering group.
The Minister has also announced a review of the organic farming scheme to see how funds can be used to best effect in the future to attain the 5% organic land target. The results of the review will be announced during national organic week.
Both these announcements were made immediately prior to the summer holiday period and the Minister or senior staff were not available to respond further to queries from Organic Matters.
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