Principles of Organic Agriculture ) Worldwide participatory stakeholder process

Summary

With the continuous growth of the organic sector and the challenges and opportunities that come with that growth, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, IFOAM, came to the conclusion that the basic values, the fundamental underpinning for organic agriculture, needed reflec-tion and discussion. From 2003 to September 2005, IFOAM and its membership were engaged in a partiapcatory process to articlulate the Principles of Organic Agriculture. The process received its finishing touch during the Federation’s General Assembly, September 2005. The Principles serve to both inspire the organic movement in its full diversity, and to articulate the meaning of Organic Agriculture to the world at large. In this paper the process and the result is presented. A comparison is made with the section on principles in the proposed EU regulation on organic production and labelling of organic products