Evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming

Summary

The overall objective of this project is to give a scientific support in the implementation of the proposed European Action Plan for the further development of Organic Food and Farming in Europe.
In June 2004 the European Commission released the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming. With this action plan the Commission intends to assess the situation of organic farming and to lay down the basis for policy development in the coming years. The plan will thus provide an overall strategic vision for the contribution of organic farming to the Common Agricultural Policy.
The project consists of the following specific objectives and work packages:
-Development of a toolbox for EU and national administration to evaluate and monitor the implementation of the European Action Plan along the whole food chain for the following areas: information, training and education, research, production, processing, market development, certification, public expenditures.
-Testing of the evaluation toolbox on a selected number of ongoing national action plans
-Identification of conflict areas between national and EU Action Plan targets concluding in policy recommendations to the Commission and national authorities.
-Early assessment of potential risks and problems associated with the implementation of the EU Action Plan and test initially the evaluation toolbox on the European level when the European Action plan is in place.
-Policy analysis for the implementation processes and procedures.
-Recommendations for different actors elaborated with involvement of essential stakeholders.
This will be achieved by the identification of a set of suitable indicators and concepts as a basis for the development of an integrated evaluation tool to assess the long-term and short-term effects of the implementation of the EU Action plan for Organic Food and farming.
The project will strongly support EU and member states in the implementation of Action Plans for Organic Food and farming.
Involved organisations, project partners:
The project partnership consists of 10 partners from 9 countries, covering different disciplines, stakeholder views and experiences with national action plans for Organic agiculture.
-Research Institute for Organic Agriculture; FiBL; Switzerland
-University of Wales, Aberystwyth; UWA; United Kingdom
-University of Hohenheim; UHO; Germany
-Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona; UPM; Italy
-University of Southern Denmark; USD; Denmark
-IFOAM EU Regional Group; IFOAM EU; Belgium
-Institute for Sustainable Development; ISD; Slovenia
-Institute for Agricultural Economics; VUZE; Czech Republic
-Agricultural Economics Research Institute; LEI; Netherlands
-Sociedad Española de Agricultura Ecológica; SEAE; Spain
Literature:
European Commission, 2004: European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming.