EU spears organic science

The new ERA-NET initiative is designed to improve the co-operation and co-ordination of national research activities through networking, and the mutual opening up of national and regional research programmes, writes CORDIS.

The EU organic market was worth around €10 billion in 2002, according to data from Organic Monitor, but growth has slowed in recent years: an increase of 8 per cent between 2001 and 2002 shrunk to an estimated 5 per cent between 2002 and 2003, said the market analysts.

Organic production could hold the key to the sustainable development of agriculture, the environment and rural areas, as well as offering improvements to food safety and quality. But if this vision is to be achieved, more research is needed, claims CORDIS.

Although rapidly expanding, research in organic food and farming is still a relatively new feature of the European research landscape. As such, it is characterised by small research communities, often widely dispersed, both institutionally and geographically.

The EU established the new international partnership,CORE Organic​ (coordination of European transnational research in organic food and farming), to address the fragmentation and to bring together government ministries, research councils and other research funders from 11 countries - Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK.

Throughout its three year lifetime, participation in the €1.2 million initiative will remain open to any EU country that has a national research programme for organic food and farming. Current combined annual spending of the 11 countries represented in the ERA-NET scheme on organic research is about €60 million.

According to CORDIS​, the joint activities of the CORE Organic partners will revolve around the co-ordination and evaluation of existing research, the identification of future scientific priorities, and the sharing and integration of knowledge and information.

The ultimate goal for the end of the project is the creation of a joint research programme among partner countries with a budget of at least €3 million per year, providing European authorities with the opportunity to launch research projects on a much larger scale than is currently possible.

In June this year the European Commission launched a 21-point plan to cover all areas of the organic trade - from rural development and improving farming standards to improving consumer information and the introduction of an EU-wide organic food label - believed to be a reaction to increasing consumer demand for organic food, often perceived to be 'safer' and 'healthier' than more mainstream food production methods, especially in the wake of various food scares.

Organic production has grown steadily over the last 20 years. In 1985, just 100,000 hectares of EU farm land was certified organic - less than 0.1 per cent of total farm land. By the end of 2002, this figure had risen to 4.4 million ha or 3.3 per cent of total farm land.