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Organic food helps revive fortunes of Europe’s farmers
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn’t Fit
sent by Marcus (activ-l)
The Independent – 14 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2656035.ece
Organic food helps revive fortunes of Europe’s farmers
By Adam Mitchell in Brussels and Rachel Shields
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.
*
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