“What ‘organic food’ and its localised market was in those days bears little resemblance to ‘the industry’ that it is today: an industry that is heavily and centrally policed, has a compendium of regulations and is ‘big business’ on a global scale.”

He goes on to describe how, despite rapidly growing demand for organic food over the last two decades, the area of land certified organic in the UK has remained pretty much static at around 3 or 4 percent. Rose believes that this is because the UK retail sector is now dominated by the supermarkets who care little where or how produce is grown or raised so long as it can be sold:

“Their green credentials include the import of some eighty percent of organic foods, shipped and flown in from all over the world and from farms that are often as big and as undistinctive as their conventional monocultural lookalikes.”

Rose’s argument is not new and represents one side of a perceived schism in the organic sector with those who are committed to the organic movement – a philosophical as well as practical position – suggesting that many new entrants see organic as no more than a collection of on-farm production techniques and supply chain assurance measures that, if applied and recognised, will attract a price premium.

Those committed to the organic movement bemoan what’s become cast as the ‘conventionalisation’ of organic production and supply systems and worry that this process erodes trust, compromises quality and limits access to markets for those ‘genuinely’ committed to organic production and so operating from a higher cost base. And it certainly is the case that the price premium has attracted new entrants to organic production, many of whom do apply organic standards to the same kinds of monocultural systems, supply chains and business practices as are used by ‘conventional’ producers. (Of course, agribusinesses and the big retails argue that they are democratising organic products – reducing prices and increasing access, whilst at the same time increasing demand and opportunities for producers: wherever they are in the world.)

Organic certification bodies have struggled to capture the economic and social elements that should complement the environmental aspects of organic production and supply in their standards. It is therefore perfectly possible for organisations and businesses with no real interest in the philosophy of organic production to produce food that meets a given set of standards, yet makes no contribution to a more generalised understanding of sustainability. Part of the problem is the difficulty of coming up with a set of practices and measurements that will consistently deliver and capture the sorts of social goods that the organic movement feels organic production should deliver. Another important factor is the time at which the first standards were written; in the 70s a technocratic approach to certification presented an opportunity for the older organisations to escape an at times slightly difficult history and once those standards had been written it proved hard to find space for anything that couldn’t easily be quantified.

Personally I have a lot of sympathy with Rose’s position, yet through my work for Provenance I’ve noticed that conventionalisation isn’t a one way street – or at least that the boundaries between organic and conventional systems are fuzzy.

A prime example is Home Farm Nacton, a 2500 acre estate on the Suffolk coast. The farm produces field scale vegetables and cereals for the conventional market and in the late 1990s it began a rolling process of organic certification to Soil Association standards – now over 300 acres are organic. As this has happened, far from the organic land becoming ‘conventionalised’ the rest of the farm has become much more organic: mechanical weeding and companion planting have almost completely eliminated pesticide and herbicide use in the conventional rotations whilst manure, compost and lay crops have significantly reduced the need for synthetic fertilizers.

Though much of Home Farm’s production still goes to the supermarkets (marketing 300 acres of organic vegetable production locally would be almost impossible at present), a significant trade with smaller shops, box schemes, caterers and wholesalers has begun to develop and continues to grow. Farm manager Andy Williams believes that organic production has made him think more about the rest of the land and “farm better”.

Unlike many of the really big vegetable producers (whose holding run into tens on thousands of acres here and on the continent), Home Farm Nacton is still family owned and is still very much part of the community and so, perhaps, is not open to the criticism of ‘conventionalisation’ in the first place. Nevertheless it does demonstrate that organic production can capture the spirit of the movement and effect wider change on larger farms where not all the land is certified.

The speakers, Prof. Martin Wolfe, Patrick Mulvany, Dr. Julia Wright and Dr. Michel Pimbert, argued that taking an agroecological approach to agriculture could help address environmental issues while maintaining and increasing food production: indeed, this was a key finding of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which DFID Ministers approved in June 2008. More recently the APPG report “Why no thought for food” has recommended that DFID should implement (as well as approve) the IAASTD findings. The implications of the IAASTD and APPG findings are a need for fundamental changes to agricultural policy and practice, if hunger is to be averted in ways that will ensure equity and restore the environment.

Patrick Mulvany, senior policy adviser to Practical Action and co-chair of the UK Food Group, began the meeting with an overview of agroecology and a call for an increase and strengthening of agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST) towards agroecological sciences (as recommended by the IAASTD). He wryly observed that agroecological approaches – often farmer controlled, invariably low cost, generally focusing on smaller landowners and never dependent on expensive proprietary inputs – unlike new crop varieties or synthetic inputs, do not generate income through licensing. As a result they were of little interest to ‘UK Plc’.

The two presentations that followed focused on examples of agroecological approaches in action. In the first Prof. Martin Wolfe of the Organic Research Centre , talked about Waklyns Agroforestry, his own research farm in Suffolk. Martin explained that modern agriculture tended toward monocultures which are high yielding and require little labour input but are not particularly resilient (to, for example, climate variability or disease) and so are reliant on the unsustainable use of artificial inputs. By contrast diverse systems (both within and between species) like Waklyns produce high (complex) yields, are resilient and sustainable but do require a higher labour input.

For the last 12 years Dr. Julia Wright has carried out ground-breaking work on the coping strategies of Cuba’s food system in the absence of fuel, agrochemical and food imports (this research is captured in her 2008 book: Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity: Lessons from Cuba). Her presentation (see below) described a project that developed rainwater harvesting and water protection strategies for drought resistance in Cuba. The first two slides also provide a useful comparison between agroecological and industrial approaches to agriculture.

As I’ll be writing about some of the activities ECCE-Bio is involved in over the next few months I thought some background information would be helpful.

Developing international links

In 2001 two organic farmers from Norfolk, encouraged by Clive Peckham of East Anglia Food Link, visited the El Tamiso organic producer cooperative in Padua, Italy, to learn about their direct and cooperative marketing initiatives.

Nine years on that initial relationship has evolved into ECCE-Bio, a European cooperative of five organic producer organizations involved in an exchange of people, expertise, information, and inspiration. At the heart of this organization is a common vision that in order to change the current industrial and impersonal food system (rather than be subsumed by it), the organic world has to create an alternative model that works. This model is based on ‘convivial economics’; developing real long-term relationships with like-minded organic producers and consumers, ensuring not only a more stable and fairer market, but an open exchange of expertise and information.

In 2008 the decision was taken to create a formal organization as a means not only to create a common image, a common message, and common resources, but also as a common platform to put forward cooperative, ecological and ethical message to a wider audience.

Two years later, and having weathered the recession, ECCE-Bio’s members are keen to find new partner groups of farmers and growers and new projects to work on. ECCE-Bio’s members are particularly interested in work that focuses on farmer-led knowledge and advocacy networks, crop genetic diversity (including issues such as seed exchange, GM and IPRs), and that challenges the ‘conventionalisation’ of the organic sector.

ECCE-Bio’s founder members are:

Somerset Organic Link
La Terra e Il Cielo
Leitrim Organic Farmers
El Tamiso
Agricola Pueblos Blancos

Download the ECCE-Bio Charter…

William Stanley Jevons (left) was a leading 19th Century economist, as well as being a chemist, botanist, urban geographer and pioneering photographer. Jevons was central to the marginalist revolution in economic theory and perhaps his most important contribution was the eponymous paradox. In 1865 Jevons described how, in relation to coal, increased efficiencies of use lead to an increase rather than decrease in the use of that resource. At the time this was very much contrary to the prevailing wisdom, but it has since been identified in many situations – particularly in relation to fossil fuels and energy use but also, as we have seen, in the case of water use.

The Paradox has been used to argue that resource use efficiency – particularly energy conservation, is a waste of time. But this is to miss the point: Jevons was writing very specifically about technological improvements that improve efficiency. If those improvements are coupled with institutional changes – for example progressive taxation to increase fuel cost (this canceling the economic benefits associated with greater use efficiency), effective policies (that encourage the adoption of more efficient technologies) and campaigns to effect behavioral change then the Jevons Paradox will not manifest itself. In addition it’s important to consider where marginal utility in any goods or services reside. For example, in the case of low energy light bulbs it is the light emitted not the energy required that is ultimately of interest to consumers so their adoption is unlikely to lead to increased energy demands.

At Provenance, when we’re devising sustainability plans for clients, we endeavour to consider the perverse consequences that arise when too much emphasis is placed on any one aspect or outcome of a business or organisation’s activities. This isn’t always easy, particularly as the evidence base is continually growing and shifting, but we’ve got no intention of slipping into the trap of becoming too attached to a single indicator, such as carbon, or a single methodological approach, such as life cycle analysis (LCA) rather a suite of indicators and measures.

Earlier this year an excellent and timely book about the Jevons Paradox and its implications was published by EarthScan. Called Jevons’ Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements and written by John Polimeni, Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampietro and Blake Alcott it’s well worth a look (though it isn’t cheap!).

PAS 2050 is a publicly available specification for assessing product life cycle GHG emissions, prepared by BSI British Standards and co-sponsored by the Carbon Trust and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). PAS 2050 is an independent standard, developed with significant input from international stakeholders and experts across academia, business, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) through two formal consultations and multiple technical working groups.

Carbon Trust: Guide to PAS 2050

PAS 2050 is a free and publicly available methodology but implementation can be fiddly and time-consuming. Provenance offers support to businesses interested in using PAS 2050; we can either manage the whole process for a given product or range of products or work with you to train staff and set up your own assessment systems.

‘Carbon footprint’ is an increasingly common term used to describe the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by a particular activity or entity. Understanding these emissions, and where they come from, is necessary in order to reduce them. Until recently, businesses wanting to measure their carbon footprints have focused on their own emissions, but now they and their customers are increasingly concerned with emissions across their entire supply chain.

What are the benifits of PAS 2050?

As outlined in the PAS 2050 Guide, measuring the carbon footprint of products across their full life cycle is a powerful way for companies to collect the information they need to:

• Reduce GHG emissions
• Identify cost savings opportunities
• Incorporate emissions impact into decision making on suppliers, materials, product design, manufacturing processes, etc.
• Demonstrate environmental/corporate responsibility leadership
• Meet customer demands for information on product carbon footprints
• Differentiate and meet demands from ‘green’ consumers

More specifically PAS2050 can provide companies with:

• Internal assessment of product life cycle GHG emissions
• Evaluation of alternative product configurations, operational and sourcing options, etc. on the basis of their impact on product GHG emissions
• A benchmark for measuring and communicating emission reductions
• Support for comparison of product GHG emissions using a common, recognised and standardised approach
• Support for corporate responsibility reporting their products and to identify emission reductionopportunities

For customers (if companies choose to communicate their product footprints), it provides:

• Confidence that the life cycle GHG emissions being reported for products are based on a standardised, robust method
• Greater understanding of how their purchasing decisions impact GHG emissions

Further information and detail about PAS 2050 is available from the BSI website.

There is an increasing interest in wild harvested foods, not just in the usual plants and mushrooms but more unusual species including naturalised garden escapees like Himalayan balsam and oft overlooked representatives of our native flora such as shepherds purse and hedge garlic (illustrated left). Leading chefs and delicatessens, particularly in London, are requesting small volumes of an increasing range of foraged foods – often they’re guided in these choices by a new breed of responsible, professional forager.

Miles Irving is one such forager, part of a growing number supplying shops, restaurants and their own tables with seasonal wild food. Miles is based in Kent and runs a supply company called Forager, he sells to local restaurants and also directly into London. This year he published his first book, The Forager Handbook and it’s a worthy successor to two classics; Richard Mabey’s Food for Free (1972) and Roger Phillips’ Wild Food (1983).

Covering a wide range of UK plants (including garden escapes) and with good recipes – often provided by the chefs Irving supplies, the book also includes a useful introduction covering the basics of foraging; including toxicity and sustainability. Unlike Mabey or Phillips’ books The Forager Handbook doesn’t cover mushrooms, but these probably require a separate guide anyway.

In testing the book in the shop I went straight to cherry plums (illustrated right), a tasty and worthwhile wild fruit inexplicably omitted from Wild Food and dismissed by Mabey. Irving both includes and eulogizes these multi-coloured stone fruits.

At Provenance we offer an assessment service to landowners and mangers, initially walking over the land and making general observations then following up with more detailed seasonal visits (particularly important when assessing the potential for mushroom collection). If we think that there are species that can be sustainably harvested and are sufficiently in demand we will make recommendations for collection. This could involve us providing support in harvesting and marketing foraged foods or alternatively we can handle the harvest and sales ourselves, returning a proportion of sales to the landowner.