Positioning Organic Ethics - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 306

into diverse societal institutions, must be put squarely into the center of the organic
debate. IFOAM and other organic organizations must also respond to the growing
bifurcation of society between the largely unreflective food consumer who ignores
ecological and social issues, and those who are more and more sensitized to
new types of societal contracts for sharing food, resources, land and labor and to
assuming responsibility for addressing food issues (Ravenscroft and Taylor 2009 ).
A clear and explicitly ethically oriented organic could lead such a broader
movement that incorporates several alternative movements to establish “value”
communities in mutually supportive relationships. This could include several types
of social and ecologically oriented organizations at local and regional levels, new
forms of national fair trade, 1 and new types of collaboration among rural and urban
areas, including farmers and consumers. Such collaborative arrangements could
also involve networks with non-profit organizations, such as Climate Alliances
(Collier and Löfstedt 1997 ; Behringer et al. 2000 ), activists for human rights (see
De Schutter 2010 ), food security (Power 1999 ) or food sovereignty (Windfuhr and
Jonsén 2005 ) and others.
In such coalitions, the consumer should no longer take a “passive” position. The
new consumer should become a “producer” and share the risk and responsibility
for local production. These alliances are not limited to rural-urban relationships,
but also include community level collaborative arrangements between local farmers
and others. To establish this type of farmer-public collaboration, several types of
new institutional forms for co-operation, economies and ownership types need
to be created (Ravenscroft and Taylor 2009 ). Some of these will embody the
Principles of what Dahlberg called, “regenerative food systems” (Dahlberg 1993 ).
Such collaboration has consequences for the IFOAM structure. While IFOAM
is largely farmer oriented, in the future it must become a more farmer-public
organization. The Principles express the potential contribution that organic farming
offers and they present a vision for improving agrofood systems globally (IFOAM
2009 ). They are formulated in general terms, and thereby lend themselves to being
applied and followed outside the organic movement as well as within it (Alrøe and
Kristensen 2004 ). Such a change in orientation might also offer a promising point
of departure for bringing the IFOAM Principles into a more open public debate that
could even go beyond organic. More generally, organic agriculture and specifically
the incorporation of ethics into daily practices needs to be seen as a process for
social learning (Röling and Wagemakers 1997 ) in a societal context.

14.2.2 Implementing Ethics in Organic Marketing

What is the potential to bring a more value centered approach into the corporate food
industry? Large retailers are, and will continue to be vital for many organic farmers.