OF&G :: The Blog

The Soil Association conference gets underway today in Birmingham (and yes, they have already been publicly ribbed about the industrial location, at The Custard Factory).

We have folk there, as do most organic organisations and companies. It’s generally a setting in which the more philosophical issues are dealt with and the temperature taken of the sector at this point in time – a kind of state of the nation event for organics.

Interestingly, this year it seems to have kicked off with the SA charity’s director, Patrick Holden, espousing better co-operation and less divide between organic and non-organic farmers. This is pleasing, because it’s what OF&G has been saying since it became the UK’s first government approved organic certifier in the early 90s.

Of course deeply held perceptions and prejudices do not disappear overnight, or merely on Mr Holden’s say-so. There has to be trust and understanding between organic and non-organic supporters and farmers, but hopefully this signals that more of those involved in organics are willing to be inclusive, rather than critical.

If you’re not at the conference, the best way to follow it is using Twitter. There are various people providing updates from the scene, including our own Development Officer, Steven Jacobs, and Deputy News Editor of Farmers Weekly, Caroline Stocks.

Fear not though, if you’re not a ‘Tweeter’ yet you don’t have to delve into this new world too deeply. Just follow one of these links to see a timeline of what people are saying about the event in your web browser.

Using the Twitter website: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23SAConf

Or using the Twitterfall service: http://twitterfall.com/?trend=saconf!%231F3547

Interestingly, following on from the last post, a new Defra-backed report has emerged which suggests that shoppers have a perception of organic food and farming that is beyond the practical requirements of the regulations.

The study, carried out by the University of Exeter, reports an ‘expectations gap’ between the reality of production and processing and the knowledge and understanding of shoppers. Read the Farmers Guardian report here.

This is not entirely surprising and is the kind of communication failure that we all hope will be addressed by the OrganicUK initiative (see previous post).

Unfortunately, whenever we read something like this you can bet it will be spun quickly into a story about organics misleading consumers. Again, that’s probably our own fault as an industry for letting ourselves get into that position. Now is the time to take serious steps to address the problem. It’s a bit of a shame, though, that Defra will fund this kind of research, but doesn’t seem willing to find money for the OrganicUK bid to the EU to help us move on from the problem.

A few articles have popped up in recent days that caught our attention here and are, for varying reasons, worthy of a look, so we thought we’d share them with you. You never know, it might even become a semi-regular thing – this is a blog after all!

• Guy Watson, of Riverford Organic, puts up a sturdy and logical defence of organic food in the light of recent negative comments in the Guardian.
• OF&G licensee, Andrew Charlton, uses his Farmers Weekly column to examine issues around maintaining fertility on his stockless arable farm. It’s interesting stuff.
• We particularly like this piece on the Natural Products website that gives a great overview on our Selling Organics: What’s the Story? conference of last week. Even more is to follow in the print edition in November.

Seen something you think we should read? Add them to the comments for all to see.

A fascinating day was had by all at our Selling Organics: What’s the Story? conference, held at London’s South Bank University, on Thursday.

Pretty well all of the top names in UK organics were there to hear from industry leaders, marketing experts and academics with real insight on how the organic sector can look to take itself forward.

The main point was to address the failings we’ve all come to recognise in how organics tells its story to a wider audience and a lot of views and experience were shared in a packed schedule. There was also plenty of chance for networking and it was a really good day for meeting new people and catching up with familiar faces.

You can read our full report in the news section of our website and below is the Flickr set from the day. Please forgive the quality of the photography – I am not a professional snapper

I stumbled across this piece from Kitchen Garden on on weed management in organic gardening. Despite being focused on domestic situations, it’s actually a really nice and straightforward overview of the kinds of issues and solutions that organic farmers and growers use on a larger scale.

If you’re not a farmer and never understood why weeds are such a large part of the discussion around producing fields of organic crops, this might prove an interesting (and pretty brief) read.

Just a post for the record, really, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, Defra has launched its updated website.

They confess that not all of the information has been hauled right up-to-date yet, but they are working on it. So, for all your Government organic farming-related info you now need to go here.

Not entirely sure about the colour scheme – the phrase ’slightly garish’ springs to mind  and it’s far from clear that the designers consulted a colour wheel, but hey ho, a change is as good as a rest, n’est pas?

OrganicUK is an extremely important initiative to bring this country’s organic sector businesses together to properly communicate what organic stands for.

We've pledged - will you?

OF&G has been firmly behind the project from very early days, to the point where we were the first certifier to commit financially to the project.

Now we’re encouraging every organic-related business to get onboard and put their weight behind this crucial move to inform shoppers why they should buy organic.

We’ve very proud to be a backer, so today we’ve added the badge prominently on our website as a reminder to all to take a look and think carefully about what they can afford to put in.

If you haven’t already, please do take a look at the OrganicUK website. If we can pull off a great campaign, everyone will benefit.

As the fallout from the strange FSA report on nutrition in organic and non-organic food continues to rumble round the media’s opinion pages, it’s good to see a rational argument now and then.

That’s exactly what we get from Exeter farmer, David Garaway, [via thisisexeter.co.uk] who has done a good job of explaining why getting excited over nutrition is only a very small part of the reason for being (and buying) organic.