Our principles
IFOAM is the only organization
that advocates for organic agriculture at the international level. IFOAM, in
its advocacy work, is guided by the Principles of
Organic Agriculture (Health – Ecology – Fairness – Care) which uses as the
basis to encourage more participatory policies and the step by step adoption of
organic practices by private and public sectors worldwide. The organic
principles have inspired the IFOAM
Declaration for Living Change which pronounced by ten Alternative
Nobel Prize Laureates firmly underlines our deep concerns about prevailing
agriculture policies, research and development agendas, and private sector strategies.
Our campaigns
While Organic Agriculture can significantly cool
the planet due to its high sequestration and low emission farming practices the
priority of the IFOAM Climate Change Campaign is to raise awareness of the dangers of adopting climate
policies, mechanisms and finance that reduce everything to just carbon. The
focus on carbon and not on the alleviation of hunger and biodiversity loss
risks incentivizing industrial agriculture that delivers carbon credits at the
expense of livelihoods, ecosystems and food security in developing countries.
 While the IFOAM Biodiversity Campaign highlights the massive
destruction and silent poisoning of the world’s ecosystems by industrial
agricultural the major goal of this campaign is to reverse the prevailing
paradigm of food scarcity. The campaign sets out to explain the science and
practices behind resilient and high yielding ecological-based systems that
utilize rather than destroy nature’s ecological functions. From micro
production to regional scale land regeneration the campaign aims to map ecological
farming systems in order to provide policy makers and farmers the world over
with solid on the ground proof of the power of nature to nourish the world.
Industrial agriculture is aggressively positioning itself as the only solution
to feeding a growing human population. Unfortunately it is not about feeding
the world but maximizing profits by producing commodities for which ever global
market pays the most. This is the reason why we have enough food now to feed and
extra 1.5 billion people yet one billion people are hungry or starving. The
IFOAM Food Security Campaign aims to put the needs of local people before
those of anonymous global markets by encouraging policies and grass roots
actions that support the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty – especially for the
poor.
Our campaign rationale
While we appreciate that many who promote and practice industrial
farming do so with the best of intentions it cannot be ignored that it is the
major cause of climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction and a
major barrier to the alleviation of hunger. Our campaign work must therefore
highlight the devastating impacts of industrial agriculture if real change is
to occur. The necessity of this approach is supported by the findings of the World
Agriculture Report (IAASTD), a scientific assessment of global agriculture
signed by nearly 60 governments; that calls for an urgent move away from
destructive and chemical-dependent industrial agriculture and the adoption of agro-ecological
farming methods that champion biodiversity and benefit local communities.
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