From Clean & Green to Organic: Opportunities and Impediments to Achieving an Organic Tasmania

Summary

Tasmania enjoys a reputation as clean and green. It offers an apparent good fit with a vision of organic production as well as some natural advantages. Tasmania’s moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is an advantage for organic production.This paper presents some context for the progress of Tasmania from the puffery of ‘clean and green’ to the standard of organic. Australia leads the world accounting for 45% of the world’s certified organic agricultural land (22.69 m ha of 50.92 m ha.). Tasmania has been an early mover as an advocate of organics with organised advocacy dating from 1946. Despite this enthusiasm, Tasmania only accounts for 0.01% of Australia’s certified organic agricultural land and 4% of Australia’s certified organic producers. Organic accounts for just 0.2% of Tasmania’s agricultural land. Tasmania’s leading organic company does not use Tasmanian ingredients. The organic chocolate products of Cadbury are made in Poland. Recent initiatives in organic and conversion to organic are presented along with some international initiatives of regional conversion to organic.