Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1.5
IFOAM principles of organic agriculture in 1980 (Woodward and Vogtmann 2004)
To work as much as possible within a closed system, and draw upon local resources.
To maintain the long-term fertility of soils.
To avoid all forms of pollution that may result from agricultural techniques.
To produce foodstuffs of high nutritional quality and sufficient quantity.
To reduce the use of fossil energy in agricultural practice to a minimum.
To give livestock conditions of life that conform to their physiological needs and to humanitarian
principles.
To make it possible for agricultural producers to earn a living through their work and develop
their potentialities as human beings.
3 The notion that these linkages constitute a whole system within which there is a dynamic
yet to be understood.
4 The belief in science and an insistence that whilst these ideas might be challenging orthodox
scientific thinking, they could be explored, developed and eventually explained through
appropriate scientific analysis.
It was not until the organic movement became global and its arguments started gaining
recognition in the wider political and social spheres that the need to articulate organic agricul-
ture's fundamental values to outsiders arose. IFOAM has been the key organisation defining
the principles of organic agriculture. The original principles created in 1980 are presented in
Table 1.5.
The principles, until now, have been published at the start of the IFOAM 'basic standards'
of the organic guarantee system. They served as an introduction to the standards to clarify the
aims of organic agriculture (Woodward and Vogtmann 2004). The original seven principles
have frequently been amended and added to over the intervening period. The process of
revision has been done at the biennial General Assembly where members tabled motions for
changes, which were debated and voted on. They have also been amended as part of the revision
of the standards. This process has lead to the current 'principle aims of organic agriculture for
production and processing'. The current list (Table 1.6) is substantially longer than the seven
principles of the 1980s and they are 'principle aims' rather than principles.
In recent years there has been an increasing feeling that the principle aims have become
bloated, lack consistency and have been weakened (e.g. Woodward and Vogtmann 2004). A
motion passed at the IFOAM General Assembly in 2002 resulted in the world board setting up
a taskforce to rewrite the principles. The results of the taskforce's work, which includes
thorough consultation, will be taken to the 2005 General Assembly for acceptance. Therefore,
at this time they are a work in progress with an initial draft now published. The draft princi-
ples (Table 1.7) differ notably from the current principle aims and are closer in philosophy and
structure to the original 1980 principles.
In addition to this work, others have been debating and refining organic principles. As the
governments in the USA were developing rules to control the production, promotion and sale
of organic goods in the 1990s, Benbrook and Kirschenmann (1997) published a brief list of
principles to provide a common framework for stakeholders and decision makers to base rec-
ommendations. Around the same time, the Danish Research Centre for Organic Farming
(DARCOF) initiated a national debate on the principles of organic agriculture due to perceived
uncertainties in existing principles and the need for clear principles to guide research planning.
