IFOAM EU Group is involved in TP "Organics", a platform for organic food and farming research which joins the efforts of industry and civil society in defining organic research priorities and defending them vis-à-vis the policy-makers.

Research is an important tool to find solutions for the key problems of the society, to develop innovation and to ensure growth, employment and competitiveness of the EU economy. Therefore, the EU sets up 'Framework programmes' (FPs) as main financial tools through which the European Union supports research and development activities covering almost all scientific disciplines. The currently running FP7 (2007 to 2013) bundles all research related EU initiatives together under a common roof in order to reach the above mentioned aims.

Organic food and farming systems are a promising and inventive way to contribute to the challenges of the EU in the area of agriculture and food production. Organic production has offered dynamically growing markets and has created employment for over some decades now. It offers young farmers and companies an economic alternative. On the other hand, it delivers public goods in terms of environmental protection, animal welfare and rural development.

Furthermore, the innovation produced by the organic sector has considerably driven general agriculture and food production towards sustainability, quality and low risk technologies.

Due to the evidence for the good environmental performance of organic farming and the trust in organic foods, there are high expectations of organic farming for the future. The overall aim towards greater sustainability that is characteristic of organic farming is in line with the need for improvement of sustainability in all European agriculture.

In relation to this, organic farming has a good capacity to respond to the big challenges the European Union and the world are facing today, both in the area of environment (mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, incl. water and soil management and protection) as well as in the area of food (a need for sustainable production of high quality foods), rural development and animal welfare.

Furthermore, organic production is a leading market for high quality and high value foods.

A thriving, innovative organic food and farming research would be one of the most important tools for ensuring that these high expectations and opportunities can be fulfilled.

Organic farming has been characterised by innovation in agricultural methods; here, the most important aspect has been the systems approach within the concept of naturalness, which is the key approach in research on organic agriculture. Many new solutions, in the form of products as well as in practices and research methodology, have been developed on the basis of this approach. Innovation is taking place also in organic food processing, where the demands for naturalness, high quality, environment friendly production and safety of foods have to be fulfilled at the same time. Yet the needs and capacities for improvement, with the help of dedicated organic food and farming research, are high and current support does not reflect them enough.

Therefore, it would be of common interest to invest into organic food research in order to improve and further develop the system of organic production. So called technology platforms have proven to be a powerful instrument to bring together a wide range of stakeholders identifying research priorities of a sector.

Technology platforms are industry-led while also involving the financial world, public authorities, the research community and civil society. Their potential is well-acknowledged by the EU institutions.

There are about 38 different TPs, but so far, there was no one that deals with agriculture, in general, or with organic food and farming and public goods, in particular.

This lack was pointed out even by the European Commission at the conference "TOWARDS FUTURE CHALLENGES OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN EUROPE" in Brussels, 26-27 JUNE 2007.

Consequently, the IFOAM EU Group, representing the organic sector, initiated in close cooperation with ISOFAR a process for drawing up a vision for innovative research activities for organic agriculture and food systems with a strong focus on providing public goods.

The process of forming this coalition of partners started in June 2007 when several organisations from the organic sector got together to discuss the different scenarios for agriculture and food systems up to the year of 2025. The result, after a year of intensive consultations, was the publication of a Vision for an Organic Food and Farming Research Agenda 2025. This important undertaking has been coupled at the same time with the establishment of the Technology Platform ‘Organics’ with the core idea to streamline organic research into agreed priorities and help translating these priorities into funding for concrete research programmes and projects.

The vision, finalised in July 2008, formulates what the organic food and farming sector wants to reach in future times and how organic food and farming could contribute to solve global problems (available in English, German and Slovenian on www.tporganics.eu)

Further in December 2009 TP Organics published its Strategic Research Agenda for Organic Food and Farming.
The purpose of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is to enable research, development and knowledge transfer that will deliver relevant outcomes – results that will contribute to the improvement of the organic sector and other low external input systems.

The document has been developed through a dynamic consultative process that ran from 2008 to 2009.

It involved a wide range of stakeholders who enthusiastically joined the effort to define organic research priorities. (download it from www.tporganics.eu)

We invite you to visit the TP Organics website in order to get more information and following the Strategic Research Agenda development.

www.tporganics.eu

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Research Projects

The ORWINE project - Organic viticulture and wine-making: development of environment and consumer friendly technologies for organic wine quality improvement and scientifically based legislative framework.