Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
One of the activities that will be carried out in CORE Organic is a research priorities
exercise aimed at involving a wide variety of stakeholders in the organic sector, from producers
to consumers. A UK exercise is being carried out as a pilot for this wider study during 2005.
Previous exercises in establishing organic research priorities in the UK have tended to consult
a fairly narrow range of stakeholders and have focused on technical rather than social issues.
Reed (2004) argues strongly for social science to move up on the organic research agenda. At
least in European terms, the basis for this is that following the reform of the Common Agricul-
tural Policy, organic farming may be more important as a means of bringing a diverse range of
added benefits to rural communities than as a system of food production.
Conclusions
Research is important in the development of organic food and farming. To fulfil this role a
broad range of methods and approaches is needed. There is no single kind of scientific method
that is adequate and there is also a need to develop new methods and approaches. It is a great
challenge to include very different methods, applied within a wide range of perspectives, in an
interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research effort. There are no essential barriers to estab-
lishing such cross-disciplinary research collaborations but there are many practical and struc-
tural barriers. The recent initiatives on increased international research cooperation within
organic research will, however, help to realise more comprehensive research efforts by forming
organic research communities that, for example, share experiences, provide for expensive
facilities for large-scale and long-term systems research and coordinate research initiatives.
There are also many ways in which research in organic agriculture can benefit from coopera-
tion with mainstream agricultural research. These options increase in step with the establish-
ment of ways of organising organic research that promote such interaction and with the
changing research agendas for conventional research. Despite these benefits, and because of
the positive integration of organic research into mainstream institutes, there is still a clear
need to sustain dedicated organic research institutes and to foster new international research
networks and organisations that focus entirely on organic research.
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