Gillain Westbrook, formerly of the ICSA (Irish Cattle and Sheep Association) takes up a new position as general manager of IOFGA.
(See here for the first piece on this)
I asked for her views on the state of the organic sector in Ireland. “I think there is so much potential to grow. CAP reform should offer a lot of opportunities for cereals and horticulture”. This is because, according to Westbrook, it is likely that the payments based on livestock units in a reference year will be replaced by a per hectare flat rate payment. In that context, operators will be rewarded as much for growing as for rearing.
She points out that “this will still be limited in Ireland: exports of livestock are important. However mixed farm approaches may become more popular with the CAP reform. The allowance for partial conversions of holdings to organic should add to this. At present, there are only about 5000 ha of field crops grown in both conventional and organic combined, excluding potatoes.”
She is keen to look to the recent success of countries like France, where very significant growth has occurred.
“France has had 32% market growth in 2 years. They have 300 organic farms converting per month. And the reason for this is policy changes, public procurement in particular.” Their aims are impressive: to have 8 out of 10 public restaurants in France serving regional organic food. “This sends a signal to farmers that its worth considering converting. In Ireland, E100 million worth of ingredients per year go into public procurement.”
Just how organic public procurement has become a policy issue in France is very interesting. “They've legislated for it. Basically, there are EU targets for sustainable production, and the goalposts keep changing. So they've decided – 'let's just go organic'.”
The CAP Greening reference pieces are the Water Frameworks and Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directives, both areas organic farming suits.
In EU policy terms, then, organic acts as a sustainability guarantee. This is evidenced by the recent EU Commission CAP statement that organic “is shown to provide clear ecological benefit”.
Some problems are the same for both organic and conventional: “The lack of processors is an issue for both,” according to Westbrook. “The market dominance of the retail sector effects everyone too.”
That's another difference between France and Ireland: 30-40% of food goes through independent retailers.
There are also opportunities to use marketing standards, such as the PDO and PGI. “The
organic sector is not not making most of these. PGI type systems encourage networks of people, including processors. If you look at some of the regions that are PGI: organic producers and PGI can have strong links” she says, pointing to the Emilia Romagna region in Italy as a prominent example. “There are 35000 organic producers in that region, some very small. They make entire products there, in the region, and retain profits.”
“If beef production goes up by 20%, the price might come down. So adding some added value into the mix makes sense” Westbrooke states. And in general, value adding on the island keeps more product-related profits in Ireland too. “This still leaves space for good quality product as commodities” she points out “and it keeps the price up for them too”.
She cited an example from when she worked in Herfordshire. There, “farmers developed mixed enterprises on what were originally single product farms: orchards were planted that led to cider micro breweries, which in turn led to food trails in and around rural villages”, where more local producers were enrolled into the tourism offering.
Pulling some of these ideas together, imagine this scenario: meso as well as micro on-farm breweries emerging post CAP reform, in organic and conventional. Farmers growing their own hops and orchards on a larger scale making their own regionally specific beers, for tourists to enjoy. A tasty proposition indeed.
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