Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
farmers converting to organic agriculture (Mahale and Sorée 2002). Two very worthwhile
aspects of integrated farming that were traditionally overlooked by the organic movement are
aquaculture and mariculture. Yet in Asia some ecological farmers have extensive knowledge
about these subjects that can be readily integrated with organic agriculture methods. Despite a
long history of sustainable agricultural production in China, modernisation of farming prac-
tices during the 20th century led to the abandonment of customary methods and knowledge.
This trend changed during the 1980s when China began carrying out a research and demon-
stration program for ecological agriculture. By 1990, they had entered the international organic
market with tea certified by a foreign agency, in 1994 the Organic Food Development Center
was established and the following year a set of national organic standards was published (Zong
2002). China is unusual because the introduction of organic agriculture has been a top-down
process (Zong 2002), unlike the experience of most countries where organic agriculture has
been a farmer/consumer-based movement, initially championed from the bottom up. The
other example, Cuba, is also a socialist state.
Many parts of Africa experience severe poverty and face some of the most difficult condi-
tions for agricultural production. Developing solutions is an ongoing problem, and it is likely
that many strategies will be needed, each customised to the needs of the targeted community.
Organic agriculture has been adopted in few African countries. For example, the establish-
ment of the Kenyan Institute of Organic Farming in 1987 increased the transfer of information
about organic methods and, although the government was not initially supportive, the country
now has the largest number of IFOAM members of any African nation (Parrott and Marsden
2002). Countries in the west of Africa such as Senegal and Burkina Faso have also established
NGOs that set local certification standards to reduce external certification costs, provide
training in organic food processing, labelling, packaging and storage and establish local and
distant markets for selling organic produce (Anobah 2000).
Australia has the largest (10 million hectares) and Argentina the second largest (3 million
hectares) area of organic farmland in the world (Yussefi 2004). A major portion of the organic
land in these countries is used for extensive, low-input grazing on relatively few individual
farms. The high level of adoption of organic agriculture by graziers in these countries suggests
that organic pastoral production was technically easier to implement than organic broadacre
cropping. Both countries have well-developed export markets for organic grains (Halpin and
Brueckner 2004, Lernoud and Piovano 2004), so differences in market size and accessibility
are unlikely to be a limiting factor for organic cropping.
The modern organic moement
Scientists became increasingly interested and aware of organic agriculture in the 1980s, even
those who were not supportive of alternative agricultural systems. They found the academic
climate and funding sources were more amenable to its study than in previous decades, which
resulted in a rash of research, much of which, unfortunately, was comparisons of organic and
non-organic agriculture, rather than research designed to assist organic producers or underpin
organic principles and practices (Lockeretz 2002). By the end of the decade, the level of interest
in organic agriculture and the volume of information compiled about organic methods had
become sufficient to enable the highly successful publication of the landmark topic
Organic
Farming
by Nicolas Lampkin (1990).
Trends that began in the 1970s, and accelerated through the 1980s, continued to f flourish
during the 1990s and into the new millennium. Demand and production continued to grow
exponentially around the world, often at 20-30% per year. Formal political and legislative rec-
ognition was achieved. Normally this was started by bringing organic agriculture under legis-
lative control. Following this were intergovernmental agreements to facilitate international