Today’s newspaper mentions good and bad news for organic agriculture. The good news is that in France the sector experienced a 25% growth in 2008, and an annual growth of 10% the last ten years. The bad news is that production can not meet the demand and the growth is mainly realised by imports. Now, why is that?

All those years, during the neo-liberal epoch, we had to hear over and over and again that the market is the most important driver of change. Ecological alternatives were all nice and clear, but if the people didn’t ask for it, all ecological people would remain in their own little bubble producing for eachother, living from a a miserable salary. Now, something wonderful happened. Finally the message came through about the contamination of our environment by agricultural pesticides and nitrates, and about our bad food habits. Parents became worried about the quality of the food of their children at school, companies and institutes became worried about the food in their canteens. The government took up an article in the new environmental legislation that public institutes should serve more healthy food.

But how can one measure the rate of healthy-ness? There is in fact only one clear indicator available that satisfies most people involved: the percentage of organic food in the meal. Organic food has a label and this can be tracked down in the administration of the cantinas... So that is how demand is created. And that is one of the most important reasons in fact to have a label. Normally the World Trade Organisation (WTO) does not allow discrimination in the market place. And until recently the European Union followed this principle, with for example as consequence that it was forbidden for a school to grant a contract to a food supplier on the condition that it should be (partly) organic. This changed several years ago. The EU now allows “positive discrimination” in public procurement for labeled products that have considerably less negative environmental impact than comparable products without label. It resulted in an explosion of demand. Organic agriculture finally became a serious economic sector in France, as one of the last countries in Europe. But such long hesitation of France came from somewhere. There are not enough organic farmers or production in France to meet to growing demand, although many people would like to work in the sector. Something is terribly wrong.

Did we interfere too much with the market? Created too much “artificial demand”?  Or is the government not interfering enough? Allowing the strongest players to dominate, leaving no space for innovative young farmers? I think there is a combination of factors, but it boils down to one thing: the new message did not came through to important players and decision makers in French agriculture: the ministry of agriculture, regional chambers of agriculture and the main agricultural research institutes. They decide about stimulation and guidance measures, research programmes and use of available land.

It is just two years ago that I spoke with a young couple in the Jura, looking since ages for 5 hectares of land to start organic horticulture. They would be the first ones in the whole province! The government has the right to buy agricultural land as first buyer if there is a threat that it will be lost for other uses.  One of the rare opportunities to obtain land is from the governmental agency that buys and sells this kind of land. If you want something done by any French governmental agency you have to supply them with a “dossier”. And this dossier is decided upon mainly by a few mainstream farmers.  So no chance.

It is very seldom that an entire economic sector grows up without governmental support, especially in agriculture. So what basically happened in France is that the government stimulated demand, without stimulating production. The decision-makers with the old productivist ideas are still in power. They must be around 60 by now.  They are open for approaches to use a bit less fertilisers and pesticides, let it be only for economic reasons. But they will never, NEVER, allow something weirdly holistic like organic agriculture seriously compete with their “scientific” based agriculture. Unfortunately for them, other labels that claim to be environmentally friendly and that fit more with a productivist approach, such as “sustainable agriculture” (Rainforest Alliance) or Agriculture Raissonée (“reasonable use” of pesticides)” never became a succes. But if the organic label will fail because too many people become disappointed that their food needs to be imported, there is a new chance on the horizon for a new environmental label! Of course I hope that the dinosaurs retire first.