Category: News

Survey on the factors that influence people’s decisions to buy and consume organic food

Organic Research Centre (ORC) has named Norfolk farm manager Alex Parkinson as winner of its Young Organic Farmer/ Grower of the Year (YOFY) Award 2022/23 today (4th July 2023).

Many congratulations to long-standing organic grower Iain Tolhurst who has been recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours list with the award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to agriculture.

On 4 July in Shropshire, the National Organic Conference (NOC) 2023, run by Organic Farmers & Growers (OF&G), will let visitors see organic food and farming in action and showcase what the sector delivers for the organic market and the environment, domestically and on a global scale.

A strong field of nominees for this year’s award has been whittled down to three finalists. 

AGROMIX project survey. Agroforestry experts needed to gather insights on climate change resilience in agroforestry systems.

A new collaborative study published in the Journal PNAS finds that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders.

Italian organic/biodynamic farming student seeks work experience on UK farm.

The Farmer Network have recently been awarded funding from the National Lottery Reaching Communities Fund to develop a new Northumberland Farmer Network over the next 5 years. They are now advertising for the role of Project Manager/Coordinator

A huge thank you to Tim Bennett who steps down as Chair of ORC’s Council of Management. He will be succeeded by Donald Peck.

From 20-27 April ORC is taking part in the Green Match Fund Campaign 2023, organised by the Big Give – the UK’s biggest online match funding platform, to raise funds to further this work. During the campaign week any money raised up to £10,000 will be doubled. 

We are delighted to have been chosen again this year as one of the benefitting charities of the Green Match Fund Campaign.

The widespread adoption of intercroping will only succeed through the collaboration of all supply chain actors, breeding approaches that take into account the complexity of the supply chains, and implementation of diversification strategies in every process from field to fork.

Review shows that addressing barriers to crop diversification by farmers requires a simultaneous and coordinated approach.

Please help us improve the reliability of the Organic Farm Management Handbook data by supplying your arable crop results from last harvest.

Watch this ORC webinar for an overview of current research on plant populations, what this approach can offer, what we still need to understand and how we might get policy-makers to support wider use of such genetically diverse cereals.

The Organic Research Centre and the EU Horizon Europe-funded REFOREST project are looking for agroforestry farmers and stakeholders to be part of the North of England Living Lab.

More organic farming means less pesticide use and risk

Increasing by almost 4%, the European organic market reached another high in 2021: 54.5 billion euros. Organic farmland expanded by almost 0.8 m ha.

The Second year of results from the organic hops field lab are now available to read. This field lab aims to help organic and low-input hop growers find suitable varieties of hops for organic farming. 

UK organic market shows positive and robust growth of 1.6% in 2022 topping £3.1 billion in an unprecedented and challenging year for business and consumers

The study shows that achieving the EU 25% organic farming by 2030 target could make a big difference to the environmental impacts of agriculture.

Conversation Beneath The Trees is a podcast bringing together scientists, farmers and innovators from all around Ireland to share their ideas and experiences of farming with trees.