Stakeholders issues and aspirations to inform future public funded research in organic farming (OF0350)

Summary

This is the final report of Defra project OF0350. The attached main report starts with an Executive Summary, from which this text is a shortened extract.
Objectives.
To inform the ACOS R&D sub-committee in its work of identifying research priorities for the UK organic farming and food sector through the identification and analysis of the issues and aspirations that stakeholders feel should be addressed by publicly funded research into organic farming in the UK.
Stakeholders consulted in this project included the complete continuum of the organic sector from farmers, producers and land managers, to processors, marketers, retailers as well as consumers and the scientific community. The process of consultation and stakeholder involvement has been studied by social scientists and recommendations have been made on how the process could be improved for future exercises.
Objective 1: Create a collated directory of existing organic research priorities. A directory of existing organic food and farming R&D priorities has been created and is contained within an Access database.
Objective 2: Create a directory of existing current and completed research in the UK particularly in relation to the priorities identified in objective 1. A directory of current and completed research projects has been created within an Access database. Crops research is the most heavily funded area although livestock, supply chain and marketing, soil and economics and rural development also have considerable funding.
Objective 3: To consult organic stakeholders to identify the issues and aspirations they feel should be addressed by publicly funded research into organic farming in the UK. A series of 12 regional workshops was undertaken with stakeholders throughout the UK in addition a further 6 ad hoc workshops were undertaken at other organic events.
Objective 4: Facilitate exchange of information on the project to the ACOS R&D sub-committee.
Regular meetings and information exchange was held between the project team and the ACOS R&D sub-committee and Defra.
Objective 5: Provide a full final project report that is sufficiently detailed to provide an audit trail of the report’s projects findings and output. This report, with accompanying appendices and databases, fulfils this objective. Hard copies of all workshop documentation have been archived at Elm Farm Research Centre.
CONCLUSIONS.
Data on existing priorities and projects now exist in an easily accessible format and further work on giving access to the project information is already being undertaken through the CORE Organic ERANET.
The feedback from the consultation exercise was positive and we managed to access a wide range of organic stakeholders. The mix of stakeholders was different from previous consultations with greater number of producers and consumers having an input into the consultation. How successful the whole process has been can only be assessed once the new organic research priorities have been published and those stakeholders who participated can assess them against their own input and needs.
RECOMMENDATIONS.
 Project details and reports should be entered onto Organic E-Prints.
 The public consultation on issues and aspirations to be addressed by publicly funded research into organic farming in the UK should be undertaken on a 4 yearly cycle.
 An audit to be undertaken on how well the existing priorities have addressed the aspirations from the consultation and how research has addressed these priorities.