Category: News and events

We are living in a changing world. Organic farmers, along with all farmers across the globe, are operating within a new order of global warming and apparent food shortage.

It’s official – scientists are now able to say with some certainty that the global climate change, observed over the past four decades, is not the result of natural phenomena. It is man made.

New report forecasts rising profits for UK organic arable

The charity Send a Cow has urged world leaders meeting in Rome to invest in small-scale organic farming as the best way out of the world’s food crisis for the poorest of the poor.

This week sees the first meeting of a new National Standing Committee designed to encourage the sustainable use and protection of the UK’s rich diversity of livestock breeds.

The gathering world food crisis is bad news for many of the world’s poor and for developing economies, but rather good news for others. Global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are currently raking in huge profits.

Full details of ORC arable events 2008

The Netherlands Ambassador to London – Pim Waldeck – has taken the occasion of a brief speech at the Organic and Natural Products Show at London’s Olympia to outline some new organic market policies from the Dutch Government.

The future focus of European cereal production will be on low input (possibly organic) systems which deploy genetically diverse crops through either varietal mixtures or composite cross populations. These crops will contribute to a multifunctional agriculture.

Apocalyptic visions of a world fast running out of food have moved uncomfortably up the news agenda to present-day reality. The Financial Times reports that rice prices have hit the US$1,000-a-tonne level for the first time as panicking importers scrambled at auctions (April 17th 2008) to secure supplies.

2007 consumer survey from FSA

A re-vampled free information and advice service for English farmers thinking of converting to organic production has been launched by Defra Sustainable Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker.

The UK Government should delay introducing road biofuel at the pumps.

The relentless spread of Bluetongue across the UK continues with at least 110 holdings now affected.

The Organic Center, based in Boulder Colorado USA has concluded that the conversion of all eight million acres of U.S. produce farms (horticultural land) from “conventional” to organic would reduce pesticide dietary risks by some 97 per cent.

The Chief Veterinary Officer, Nigel Gibbens, has confirmed (June 3rd) Avian Influenza in chickens on premises near Banbury in Oxfordshire

Farm-animal MRSA strain arrives in the UK

Defra’s plans for how it intends to deliver Bluetongue BTV-8 vaccine to the nation’s anxious livestock farmers has just been revealed. They appear to rely rather a lot on crossed fingers, prayers and “flexibility”. And it now looks likely that the whole of England may well be declared a Bluetongue “Restricted Zone” by this summer.

The world’s retail organic agriculture market is worth nearly US$40 billion a year and is now produced from over 30 million hectares of land. Australia has by far the largest organic production area (12.3 million hectares).

The Government’s current method of controlling cattle TB – surveillance, testing and slaughter – is not working effectively. That is the conclusion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) select committee in its report Badgers and cattle TB, published on February 27th.

A new, independent report, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, has concluded that the majority of bovine tuberculosis spread in high-risk areas is a result of badger-to-cattle interaction.

The “Jamie Oliver” effect, resulting from the screening of the TV show Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, is seeing supermarkets suffering shortages of free range and organic chicken, reports the Daily Mail.