the world of organic agriculture - Organic Eprints

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The World of Organic Agriculture 2006
processors and inspectors.
• Support capacity building through technical education and training for advisors.
• Enhance networking through the development of a national organic farming
committee or an organic umbrella organization.
• Support organic farming research through sufficiently high budgets. Topics to be
addressed were benefits of organic farming, quality and processing, plants/ animals
and nature/ environment.
• Define a strict sets of rules on GMO and on coexistence, strict liability rules,
designation of GMO-free zones, and ban on GMO. In order to address these issues, it
was proposed that the EU regulation should define the same zero-point thresholds in
all European countries at a low level.
• Support organic market development through the support of local initiatives (local
markets, on-farm-selling etc) and change the legislation on public procurement giving
priority to organic products.
15.1.3 Research
Organic farming research is organized differently in the European countries. Until the 1980s it
was mainly carried out by private research institutes, which have been the driving force for the
development of organic farming research since the 1920s. In the 1980s the first universities took
organic farming on their curricula, in the 1990s the first EU-funded projects on organic farming
contributed to a better collaboration of researchers on organic farming on a European level, and
the first state research institutes became active. Today organic farming research is substantially
funded under national research programs or national organic action plans as well as in European
projects7 . A good overview of the current situation is given in a recent report from the European
Commission (Slabe 2004).
A major initiative to improve information exchange among those interested in organic farming
research is the international database Organic Eprints (www.orgprints.org) 8 . Organic Eprints is
an internet-based archive for papers related to research in organic agriculture. The database has
now more than 2000 entries. It was set up by the Danish Research Center for Organic Farming,
and it is part of a project under the German Federal Organic Farming Scheme, and all scientific
reports released under that scheme are archived. The European ERA-net Project CORE Organic
(Co-ordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming) 9 is a threeyear
Co-ordination Action in organic food and farming (2004 to 2007). The overall objective is to
gather the critical mass and enhance quality, relevance and utilization of resources in European
research in organic food and farming. In order to document the current status of organic farming
research in Europe the Organic Eprints database is used. The final goal of the project is to
establish a joint European research program. Currently a European Organic Research Portal is
built as part of the project, and it should be online by spring 2006.
7 For a list of projects funded by the European Commission see http://www.organic-europe.net/europe_eu/research-euprojects.asp
8 Organic Eprints (www.orgprints.org)
9 CORE Organic (Co-ordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming); Internet www.
coreorganic.org