The Real Green Revolution - Greenpeace UK

The NGO Sekem has been responsible for
most of the early development of the organic
movement in Egypt (see case study 10). It
established its first biodynamic farm in the
late 1970s and has since helped build up the
biodynamic movement. It has established the
Egyptian Biodynamic Association, which
offers training and extension services for
biodynamic farmers and those considering
conversion, and an independent certification
agency: the Centre for Organic Agriculture
in Egypt (COAE). More recently a second
organic NGO, the Egyptian Centre of
Organic Agriculture (ECOA), was established
to promote the organic sector, provide
training and support for organic farmers,
promote conferences, seminars and research
and act as a local certification and inspection
body (El-Araby, 1999). ECOA are also
establishing an international presence, having
recently run workshops and training
seminars in Tunisia and Palestine, helped
establish an organic project in Bosnia and
trained organic inspectors from eight other
African countries (ibid.).
Egypt now has more than 200 organic and
biodynamic farms, covering more than 2500
hectares. Many of these farms are ‘desert’
farms, using irrigation from the Nile. They
grow a wide variety of crops, including fruit,
vegetables, cereals, spices and tea, as well as
non-food crops such as cotton and medicinal
plants. While much produce is exported,
primarily to Europe, there is also strong
demand within Egypt and other parts of the
Arab world for a number of products. Today
the majority of Sekem’s production is aimed
at domestic markets, which offers it the
opportunity to add value through processing
rather than exporting commodities. In the
early days Sekem’s ratio of domestic sales to
exports was 1:4. It has now reversed this and
only exports 20% of its produce, relying on
domestic markets for the large majority of its
sales (Abouleish, 2001).
Ghana. The Ghanaian Organic Agricultural
Network (GOAN) is a grouping of organic
NGOs. They were joint winners of the SARD
prize in 1999 and have worked actively with
the Henry Doubleday Research Association
(HDRA) in developing a range of
programmes to support OAA. The Ghanaian
government provides some support services,
including research, but these are inadequately
funded (Scialabba, 2000). The country has a
favourable climate and produces a wide
range of fruits and vegetables. ITC (1999)
claim that there is very limited use of
chemical inputs in Ghanaian agriculture and
a strong potential for developing a thriving
organic sector. There is some demand for
organic produce in Accra. Water resource
disputes (arising from deforestation and
inappropriate farming) led to the
establishment of one organic farming project,
combined with forestry, nurseries and
training. The system brings rewards (premia
for organic cashews) and is leading from a
shift from slash and burn to sedentary
agriculture (Scialabba, 2000).
Kenya has a very active organic sector, with
more IFOAM members than any other
African country, the majority of these being
NGOs. There was a strong response to our
survey from Kenyan organizations and a
relative wealth of literature and case studies
regarding the development of OAA in Kenya.
One of the leading organizations in Kenya is
the Kenyan Institute of Organic Farming
(KIOF), founded in 1987 by Dr. Njorogye in
response to the problems of declining yields
faced by small-scale but highly intensive and
productive farmers in the Kenyan highlands.
KIOF’s mission is fivefold, including:
training, extension, information
dissemination, external consultancy and
outreach (Stolton, 1997). Methods advocated
by KIOF include composting, double deep
digging and water harvesting. KIOF offers
training and extension facilities and to date it
has trained over 200 farmer groups with
over 5000 individual members (Ker, 1995;
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