Asian Spring for organic agriculture: Korea takes a lead

Summary

Korea’s Organic World Congress (OWC) was a milestone for Korea, for Asia, and for the world. It perhaps signals an Asian Spring for organics where Korea, in particular, and Asia, in general, are set to make rapid progress in meeting their aspirations and goals for reclaiming food and agriculture as organic. Korea’s OWC can serve to reinvigorate the momentum of organics in Asia where the organic statistics are dominated by the ‘organic giants’ of China and India. One remarkable enduring legacy of the OWC is the Namyangju Organic Museum. It is the world’s first museum dedicated to organic agriculture and was launched to coincide with the OWC. It is housed in a bold and strikingly modern new building. The museum presents a timeline of the history of organic agriculture and interactive experiences for visitors. An output of the OWC are two volumes of proceedings of the Third Scientific Conference of ISOFAR offering a total of 1090 pages of peer reviewed research on organic food and farming. The success of Korea’s Organic World Congress was an affirmation of the resolve, the vision, the vibrancy and the persistence, that remain wedded to the odd idea that we really don’t want out food pesticided, irradiated, and genetically modified and otherwise corporatised, industrialised and patented.