Principles of organic agriculture and the market place

Summary

The market for organic food has experienced significant growth since the beginning of the 1990’s. There is concern that the involvement of large companies and global trade influences both the standards and the working practices of producers. This has resulted in a renewed interest in the values and principles of organic farming, including IFOAM's formulation of the four Principles of Organic Agriculture (POA) of Health, Ecology, Fairness and Care.
However, the market for organic food is not regulated by principles but by private, national and international standards and regulations. Current standards mainly consider values that are easy to codify and audit through the inspection and certification process, for example the inputs that are permitted or excluded. Values that are more difficult to inspect for have so far not been translated into rules.
It is therefore necessary to explore whether and how a broader range of values that are expressed in the principles, could be implemented in the market place under conditions of growing competition and globalisation.
The paper presents some selected results of the EEC 2092/91 (Organic) Revision Project, in relation to identifying basic values and on developing procedures for ways these values could be implemented in standards and regulations.