In Principle and In Practice

Summary

A conference for organic producers to debate the future development and direction of the UK organic sector.
Over two days at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester some 170 delegates set about analysing the state of their movement and plotted a remedial course. In doing so a new mood of optimism was tangible. The strength of the conference lay in the “self help” nature of its organisation, put together by a network of groups and individuals to address technical and policy matters. The slide away from principles, uneven application of standards, incomes under pressure, business survival, poor and patchy representation were all on the agenda.
Launched at the conference was a new organic poultry body – CROP, the campaign for real organic poultry, modelled to some degree on the real ale group CAMRA. Horticultural growers too came together in the re-launch of the Organic Growers Association (OGA).
But the products of Cirencester far exceed the launch of CROP and the new OGA. A new coherence of thought has been achieved, new confidence instilled that individual producers can make a difference. The message is - don’t be swept along in a tide of globalised industrialisation. Organic is different. It has to break the conventional mode, not let conventional break it.