permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@metalab.unc.edu>]

http://metalab.unc.edu/london   InterGarden   
london@metalab.unc.edu   llondon@bellsouth.net
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 15:52:27 -0800
From: Fred Chambers <regenerative@earthlink.net>
To: "CSA-L@prairienet.org" <CSA-L@prairienet.org>
Subject: "Europe is the place to be for aspiring organic growers."


Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 13:05:50 -0800
Headline: Europe's Organic Growers Know the Good Life

Posted at 12:21 p.m. PST Thursday, March 4, 1999
------------------------------------------------------------

Europe's Organic Growers Know the Good Life


By Betsy Lordan, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 4--To hear several Italian consultants describe it, Europe is the
place to be these days for aspiring organic growers.

"European consumers like to eat well," said Giorgio Aiana, a consultant who
is advising the island of Sardinia on how to develop its organic produce
industry. "The European Union has a great plan for organic agriculture."

Aiana and Italian economist Dionigi Carboni visited farms on the Central
Coast Wednesday to compare notes with local organic growers.

Like their U.S. counterparts, organic growers in Europe supply only 1 to 2
percent of the food market, while the conventional farming industry
supplies the rest.

But according to Aiana, European Union officials would like to see the
organic market share expand to 10 percent over the next six years --
especially in Northern European countries such as Belgium, Germany,
England, Denmark, Sweden and Holland, where demand is growing the fastest.

In fact, some policy-makers in the European Union are so convinced of the
merits of organic foods that they expect to spend less on consumers' health
care bills as the organic market grows.

"They're talking about spending a little more money on subsidies for
organic growers so people will eat better, and a little less money on
hospital bills," Carboni said.

Like the Central Coast, Sardinia has a moderate Mediterranean climate, but
the summers are hotter, and growers are hoping to market winter produce
crops to Northern European countries.

Organic growers in Sardinia and other European growing regions have several
advantages over those in the United States, said Phil Foster, one of the
pioneers of the organic produce industry on the Central Coast.

Besides the subsidies, European organic growers have their crops certified
by the union. The certified-organic label helps growers and processors to
establish credibility with consumers, whether they are selling to countries
within the union, or marketing abroad.

By contrast, there is no national standard for U.S. growers, although a
1990 federal law calls for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish
one, Foster said.

In the meantime, standards vary widely from one state to another. For
example, those in California, Oregon and Washington are strict, while some
Midwestern states have no standards at all.

But regardless of the standards, organic consumers on both sides of the
Atlantic are passionate in their opposition to certain practices that
conventional growers rely on -- such as planting genetically engineered
seeds and confining livestock.

"The idea in organic farming is that animals should ideally be allowed to
forage for food and roam freely," Foster said.

In Europe, growers are still at odds over how much space animals should
have, and they're often split along geographic lines, Aiana said. During
cold winters, herdsmen in Northern Europe have little land that's suitable
for animals to roam on, whereas in the south, the weather rarely keeps
animals penned up indoors.

In the United States, one big animal confinement issue these days revolves
around pig farms. Conventional pig farmers have always kept sows restrained
after they gave birth so they won't crush their young, Foster said. The
challenge for organic pig farmers is to protect the young while allowing
the sows to move around, he added.

(c) 1999, The Monterey County Herald, Calif. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For more information, visit the NewsHound website at http://www.newshound.com



FMChambers@CSUPomona.edu                        Agricultural Sciences
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earning an MS in Sustainable Aquaculture at Cal Poly Pomona, I enjoy the
rewards and challenges of living, learning, working, and playing. The
dedicated, hard working team of students, staff, and faculty is the best
part of being involved with the Center for Regenerative Studies  Anyone
*CAN* live a comfortable, modern life, without the big environmental
footprint.  http://www.csupomona.edu/~crs.html

Check out my peers in the NFB.  They have it together!  http://www.nfb.org