Why

hank you for the invitation. I am honoured to be here being able to share my thoughts and visions for the future of agriculture in Europe with you.

My background for this is that I since many years worked at the agricultural university of Copenhagen with organic farming in teaching as well as research. I left the university 5 years ago because I needed to challenge and face real world potentials of organic agriculture. I became a farmer, instructor, and teacher etc, on my own farm. Together with my wife we have established a farm that is producing, processing and serving all our own produce. We look upon organic agriculture as a gastronomic as well as an agronomic challenge. Quality and diversity are our major keywords. During all these years I have participated in different committees and projects concerning development and conversion to organic agriculture at a national level.

The topic of my talk, “Why ‘back to nature’ is the way forward for European agriculture” is a rather comprehensive issue, which I should like to address asking the following questions:

What does the expression ‘back to nature’ cover?

What is ‘nature’ or ‘natural’?

Is this the same as organic agriculture?

To me ‘natural’ refers to principles of nature that may be used as a guideline for manegement of human dominated systems. Only Nature is natural. Even a human being may be natural. Agri-culture is the result of human management and attempts to control Nature in order to serve mankind. The system is not natural. However, agri-culture may be more or less managed according to the principles of Nature. This, I think, is what we all mean by organic agriculture, a food production system, which increasingly should be productive based on the principles we gradually learn from the secrets of Nature.

The essential principles of organic agriculture, can they apply to a common agricultural policy for the EU?

Is it a relevant perspective to state that organic agriculture becomes the conventional mainstream food producing system of Europe in the future?

What is required and necessary to achieve such a ambitious goal?

And very specifically, is certified organic agriculture the common agriculture in the future?

Are the principles of organic agriculture acceptable for people in general and are they compatible with the democracy of the EU and its member states? How could the principles of organic agriculture significantly influence the European policymaking?

These questions are too many to be answered here. Therefore, I shall limit myself to discuss what has come to my mind as the most important issues.

The major problems and

challenges of agriculture

The number of farms and of people working in farming are diminishing. Services are disappearing. Rural areas become stratified and divided into industrial farms and spare time farms or deserted areas. Rural areas are destabilised due to the loss of local activities and economics. Conflicts between the interests of full time farmers and other people living in the rural areas are increasing.

The culture of the food producing system is similar to the culture of urban communities: total dependency on external resources, specialised, industrial processes, employment and anonymous ownership, etc. Farmers feel that they have lost their freedom to the financial system and to the state.

The traditional history, heritage and culture of rural areas and farms are disappearing and conserved in museums. Values and knowledge strongly related to natural resource based farming disappear.

An ever-increasing part of economics in the food system is concentrated among the processors and other so-called middlemen. Although economically significant, agriculture only plays a minor role in the macroeconomics of Europe. This is even so in Denmark where agriculture is exporting a significant part of the production.

The European subsidies to farming have caught all parties in a Gordian knot. Farmers wish to have an income security without being dependent. The society needs stability, productivity and control, which so far is paid for by the subsidies. Any attempts to obtain more radical changes are met with strong lobbying and even riots. Farmers, politicians and the society are locked up in this conflict. All parties are losing, including the environment, the food quality, the welfare of animals and the civil society. Moreover, nature, natural resources and nature within agriculture is continuously demolished due to general industrial and urban pollution and to agriculture’s own production methods, in spite of the subsidies.

Management and protection of nature should be part of any food producing system and be integrated in the production methods. Protective methods of farming are based on the natural potentials built up within the system and on the site-specific resources. A productive agriculture, which is also sustainable, depends on methodology and processes, which are internal to the system. The more internalised the processes are, the more self-control, stability, autonomy and freedom. An economic surplus created should be used as insurance against uncertainty and to overcome threats to the system. However, today a surplus is converted to an investment into increased growth. The never-ending demand for growth is an uncontrollable treadmill.

The challenge is to create conditions for the development of sustainable, healthy and active rural communities which both care for the heritage, productivity, and for the dynamic development of a future culture – bridging between past, present and future.

What are the potentials

of organic agriculture?

Historically organic farming was the idea of a minor group of pioneers. They were worrying about the health of humans and the role of agriculture and food. They all came to the conclusion that soil, plant, animal and man is a continuum of health. Health at all levels influence the others, they are mutually dependent. Later this lesson became the basic idea for the growing concern for the environment in the late sixties and the seventies. It soon became an accepted principle that health and environment are two aspects of how we manage agriculture and the whole food system. Few of us could imagine in the beginning of the eighties that today we have achieved what we 20 years ago looked upon as a vision.

All across society organic farming is now accepted. Organic methods have proven to meet the demands for a food producing system. Organic farms are productive, friendly to environment and animals, incomes are competitive, products are healthy and often of outstanding gastronomic quality. Organic food is widely distributed and is becoming a more common part of daily day shopping in most European countries. It is becoming a part of the traditional food market.

Today, organic is the trend.

The major factor determining the development of organic farming until now is the marked and specific government schemes for conversion subsidies. A pressure on the politicians from advanced consumer groups have resulted in this pluralism within agricultural politics.

However, organic farmers are competing in a situation where consumers compare prices. The surplus price limits the potential for a further development. A strong tendency and motivation to reduce costs and increase productivity forces the organic food system to become more and more similar with the conventional food systems. Today we see large, organic, specialised production systems, which become more and more dependent on inputs and being extremely vulnerable to changes in the market.

Organics is a vision of internalising processes and knowledge at a local scaling. Today’s rules of the market are the opposite. Market regulations of the EU and WTO do not seem to be on its way to choose the organic path.

Organic farmers, companies and institutions carry out comprehensive experimentation with new ways and means in order to meet the wider principles and goals of the organic visions and to minimise dependency of the mainstream food market.

Examples could be direct marketing, farm shops and processing at farms, conversion of public kitchens, nature conservation projects etc. It is striking that such initiatives often are initiated in order to involve wider parts of the community than only farmers and retailers. Such examples may be very significant signs of a development of alternatives to the usual food system and market.

I will give one specific example. During the past 12 years the conversion to organic food in public institutions has been carried out systematically. It started with kindergartens, continued with schools, nursery homes and is now also covering hospitals. Interestingly, there have been two different approaches.

The first approach argued that organic produce is more expensive. Therefore, a successful conversion must be based on an increased budget and on the development of organic, convenient pre-processed food easily handled in the professional kitchens. I do not need to tell you that this model clearly has demonstrated that it is not possible to convert large, professional kitchens.

The second approach was and still is based on the philosophy that conversion is a process of changing mindsets, attitudes and skills among all participants in the food system and the institutional staff involved. Money has to be invested in education while the daily budgeting should be neutral. The involved parties are trained in changed cooking methods based on seasonal and cheaper raw materials, less meat, more starch and vegetables. They are certainly also given a deeper understanding of why organic food is the way if both human health and the environment should be best safeguarded. The participants are encouraged to cooperate with local farmers, wholesalers and shops in order to achieve confidence, transparency, identity and acceptance of the food used. In kindergartens the children are involved in preparing food, food becomes a challenging part of their life. This model has demonstrated to be extremely successful. Several hundred institutions are today converted and more are coming. One hospital has been converted, others are just beginning the process.

It is our experience, that the staff involved is very open to changes if they understand and accept the arguments, if they become the owners of the organic vision. However, a great resistance is met where individuals or groups feel that they are threatened in their positions. In this situation, it is important to have the necessary support from leaders that insist on a further progress of the conversion. In this perspective the model is both a top-down and a bottom-up action. I think there is a very normal concept for that: it is democracy!

The food market is limited by the prevalent conditions for competition. It is not based on common sense and only partly on democratic decisions.

There is a great potential for changes in the food producing system if the democratic system is taking political action.

The example given is an example of an initiation of conversion due to democratic processes in spite of the opposite rationality of the market. Political actions happen at many levels and unexpected alliances are one major reason behind the initiatives and their success.

Another force is the common sense of ordinary people. They are against GMOs because of common sense, and they are supporting the conversion to organic food due to common sense. This common sense is brought into action by personal initiatives and cooperation across traditional system boundaries.

In a wider European context this example may seem very insignificant. However, think about how organic farming was treated in the public debate as being ridiculous 20 years ago. Think about how significant the role of the retailers has been at least in Denmark. And think about how urgent the needs are for new policies, which may change European agriculture from a system on drugs into a self regulating and healthy system within the communities. This is why I believe that the new trend is an increased political activity based on the experiences and practice of organic agriculture.

This approach to the future of European farming is presented and summarised in Table 1.

Organic farming: the exception

or the rule for future farming?

I should like to finish my presentation by making my statement more complex. In Figure 1 different characteristics of the future for the kind of food are listed.

The characteristic of mainstream food is that it should be ever more cheap, convenience is growing, functional food and the use of GMO is forced on the consumers, products are imported or sold globally irrespectively of their origin, season, social values etc. Quality food is exceptional together with the special demands for environmental and ethical concerns. It is evident that the food market is strongly influenced by the change of lifestyle everywhere. People are cooking less at home, they use more prepared or fast food, more singles, more parallel cultures or multiethnic societies, a stronger influence of media, less of income spent on food etc. Organic food represents an alternative. However, all the characteristics of mainstream food have a threatening influence on

Table 1 ORGANIC AGRICULTURE - Development from utopia to norm

Concepts	Force	How?	1970s	1980s	1990s	2000s	2010s	2020s
Health Belief Ethics	Pioneering Private	Steiner Balfour ...	Utopia	Vision	Trend	Norm	History	History
Niche Environment Welfare Large scale Quantity	Idealism Pluralism Profession Market	Farmers Consumers	-	Utopia	Vision	Trend	Norm	History
Quality Local Fairness Networks Learning	Politics Lobbyism Integrated goals Democracy	Organisations Companies Politicians	-	-	Utopia	Vision	Trend	Norm

Why “back to nature” is