3 February 2005 - Organic food production and organic farming need more encouragement. This Thursday, Parliament's Agriculture Committee adopted, unopposed with one abstention, the report by Marie-Hélène AUBERT (Greens/EFA, FR) on the European action plan in this field.
In the EU-15, the total surface area given over to organic farming rose from 0.1% to 3.3% between 1985 and 2002. In total, organic food production accounts for an estimated turnover of €11bn in the EU and €23bn worldwide. Since 1992, the EU has supported organic farming in the context of agri-environmental policy. MEPs welcome the Commission's recognition, in its new action plan, of the important role of this type of farming in the context of achieving the objectives of the new CAP. They note, however, that the Commission does not find it necessary to provide human or financial resources from the Union budget.
MEPs stress that more needs to be done: organic farming, they believe, makes a major contribution to the multipurpose role of European agriculture, as well as reducing pollution, protecting biodiversity and farmland and, not least, creating jobs.
The three priorities under the plan are:
-
to develop a market in organic food products based on information and enhanced consumer awareness;
-
to increase the effectiveness of state aid at national level to organic farming;
-
to improve and strengthen the Community rules on organic farming and the import and inspection requirements.
MEPs insist on the need to encourage state aid to organic farming and to the industries linked to organic food production, with quality systems being promoted. They regret the Commission's failure to present concrete proposals on sectoral organisation, and call for support (especially financial) for the organisation of production and for processing and marketing. They endorse the idea of promoting organic food products in catering, starting with public institutions and schools.
They also ask the Commission what line it intends to take on coexistence between GMOs and organic crops. They consider that in cases of contamination the financial responsibility must lie entirely with those who market GMOs illegally, and certainly not with the agricultural sector as a whole. They deplore the failure of the action plan to contain any specific measures to promote research, and propose that the EU's framework programme for research should prioritise organic farming and the coexistence of organic crops with conventional crops and GMOs.
On GMOs, MEPs want the same rules to apply to Community products and imports. Along the same lines, they suggest that the production and marketing of organic foods should be taken into account in development aid and the promotion of fair trade practices.