Agricultura orgánica en inglaterra. Normatividad general

1. Organic Farming and Food
Standard Note: SN/SC/1203
Last updated: 11 March 2011
Author: Christopher Barclay
Science and Environment Section
 This note covers some topics related to organic farming. However, the issue of whether
organic food should be certified as such if imported by air freight is covered in the
standard note on food miles. A related note is Food Miles (SN/SC/4985).
 Organic farming is supported under the Organic Entry Level Stewardship Scheme, which
is part of the Common Agricultural Policy. All farmers are paid Single Farm Payment,
based on the area of the farm. Increased payments are made to organic farmers.
 The Food Standards Agency has rejected claims that organic food is healthier than other
food, but supporters of organic food remain unconvinced.
 Sales of organic food have declined during the recession.
Contents
1 Introduction 2
2 Government support 2
3 EU Regulation on organic farming 2007 3
4 Challenges to benefits of organic food 5
5 Lords Debate on Organic Farming, January 2007 5
6 The 2007 Westminster Hall Debate on Organic Food 6
7 Problems for organic farmers, 2008 to 2009 7
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2. 1 Introduction
The main components of organic farming are avoiding the use of artificial fertilisers and
pesticides, and the use of crop husbandry to maintain soil fertility and control weeds, pests
and diseases.1
In January 2009, 619,268 hectares were farmed organically in the UK, along with 119,441
under conversion. Taken together, those two categories accounted for 4.2% of total
agricultural area.2
2009 was a difficult year for organic farmers, partly because of the recession:
Sales of organic produce fell almost 14% in 2009, according to data from TNS
Worldpanel, the consumer research group. There have been sharp falls in meat, with
chicken sales tumbling 28% and sales of beef dropping almost a quarter. While some
producers are having to scale down their operations or abandon organic farming,
others are clubbing together to fund an advertising campaign to win back consumers
by promoting organic as the west‟s answer to fairtrade.3
2 Government support
Until 2003, Government support only covered the conversion period. Support was then
extended to continuing organic farms under the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS). That has
been superseded by the reformed Common Agricultural Policy, which contains an Organic
Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) Agreement.
OELS aims to encourage a large number of organic farmers across a wide area of farmland
to deliver simple yet effective environmental management. It is similar to ELS [Entry Level
Stewardship] but recognises the greater environmental benefit that organic farming systems
deliver. The land to be entered into the scheme must be farmed organically and registered
with an approved Organic Inspection Body before an application to OELS is made.
OELS is a voluntary, non-competitive scheme. The standard payment rate is £60 per
hectare per year. There are higher payments for Uplands OELS - up to £92 per ha. Farmers
need to meet a points target and agree to carry out “simple but effective” environmental
management on the land, in order to be accepted into OELS.
Aid for converting conventionally farmed improved land and established top-fruit orchards
(planted with pears, plums, cherries and apples, excluding cider apples) is also available as
a top-up to OELS payments. Payment rates are £175 per hectare per year for two years for
improved land and £600 per hectare per year for three years for established top fruit
orchards.
Farmers with a mix of organic and conventional land can apply for OELS on their OELS
eligible land and ELS on the remainder at the applicable ELS payment rates as part of one,
whole farm, OELS agreement.
Five-year agreements are available, with monthly start dates and automatic payments every
six months.
1
Defra, Organic Systems,
2
Defra, Organic Statistics 2009 United Kingdom, July 2010
3
“Struggling organic farmers cultivate ethical link”, Financial Times, 17 January 2010
2

3. OELS is administered by Natural England from their North West regional office at Crewe.4
In March 2010 the National Audit office published a report, Defra‟s organic agri-environment
scheme, HC 513 2009-10. The Press Release gave an overview:
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Natural England have
not optimised value for money for the almost £200 million scheme to encourage
farmers into organic farming and deliver environmental benefits, according to a
National Audit Office report published today.
The Organic Entry Level Stewardship scheme is overseen by the Department and run
by Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency using EU money and matched
funding from UK taxpayers. Defra‟s forecasts for expenditure of EU funds assumed a
constant rate of take-up each year, which the NAO considers over-optimistic, and
present a risk that EU funds will not all be utilised.
The scheme pays organic farmers for managing their land in ways that will protect or
enhance the natural environment or historic landscape. The scheme is likely to have
achieved environmental benefits by supporting organic farming, and the money paid to
farmers for adopting environmental land management measures has had some impact,
but this could be increased.
Farmers can choose which environmental measures to implement and, according to
the NAO survey, 57 per cent chose some measures that involve managing features
already in place on their farm. Many of the more challenging options are rarely
implemented. Defra is now taking steps to improve the environmental impact of the
scheme by promoting better targeted measures.
Take-up of the scheme broadly reflects take-up of organic farming methods in the
farming industry as a whole. The scheme benefits larger farms, especially in the beef
and dairy sectors, more than smaller farms.
Farmers are happy with the quality of service provided by Natural England in
administering the scheme. It has considerably reduced the time it takes to process
scheme applications and the time taken to process payments since the start of the
scheme, but IT costs do still remain high. 5
Mr Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said today:
"Defra should learn from this scheme and get a lot better at putting credible
measurement arrangements in place to demonstrate whether public funds are being
used properly. It appears likely that Defra‟s scheme helped to deliver environmental
benefits by encouraging organic farming, but we can‟t draw a similar conclusion on the
land management measures and I would have expected a greater environmental
benefit for the taxpayer‟s funding contribution."
3 EU Regulation on organic farming 2007
The Soil Association expressed strong objections in February 2006 to a proposal for a new
EU Regulation, arguing that it would not take enough account of local and regional
4
Natural England, Organic Entry Level Stewardship
5
National Audit Office, Defra’s organic agri-environment scheme, 31 March 2010
3

4. distinctiveness.6 The EU Regulation was agreed in June 2007.7 Some revisions have been
made, including allowing producers to indicate national origin as well as using the EU logo.
A European Commission Press Notice explained:
The new regulation will:
 lay down more explicitly the objectives, principles and production rules for organic
farming while providing flexibility to account for local conditions and stages of
development,
 assure that the objectives and principles apply equally to all stages of organic
livestock, aquaculture, plant and feed production as well as the production of
organic foods,
 clarify the GMO rules, notably that GMO products continue to be strictly banned for
use in organic production and that the general threshold of 0.9 percent accidental
presence of approved GMOs applies also to organic food,
 close the loophole under which the unintended presence of GMOs above the 0.9
percent threshold does not currently preclude the sale of products as organic,
 render compulsory the EU logo for domestic organic products, but allow it to be
accompanied by national or private logos in order to promote the “common
concept” of organic production,
 not prohibit stricter private standards,
 ensure that only foods containing at least 95 percent organic ingredients can be
labelled as organic,
 allow non-organic products to indicate organic ingredients on the ingredients list
only,
 not include the restaurant and canteen sector, but allow Member States to regulate
this sector if they wish, pending a review at EU level in 2011,
 reinforce the risk-based control approach and improve the control system by
aligning it to the official EU food and feed control system applying to all foods and
feeds, but maintaining specific controls used in organic production,
 set out a new, permanent import regime, allowing third countries to export to the
EU market under the same or equivalent conditions as EU producers,
 require the indication of where the products were farmed, including for imported
products carrying the EU-logo,
 create the basis for adding rules on organic aquaculture, wine, seaweed and
yeasts,
 make no changes to the list of permitted substances in organic production, and
require publication of demands for authorisation of new substances and a
centralised system for deciding on exceptions,
 be the basis for the detailed rules to be transferred from the old to the new
Regulation, containing among others the lists of substances, control rules and
other detailed rules.8
The regulation came into force on 1 January 2009.
6
Soil Association Press Release, EU Review of Organic Regulation: straight bananas, Euro sausages and now
dilute organics? 16 February 2006
7
Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products
and repealing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2007/l_189/l_18920070720en00010023.pdf
8
EC press Release, Organic Food: New Regulation to foster the further development of Europe's organic food
sector, 12 June 2007
4

5. 4 Challenges to benefits of organic food
Many supporters of organic farming have been disappointed that the Food Standards
Agency (FSA) has not shown more enthusiasm for organic food. However, the FSA bases
its views upon its analysis of the available evidence. July 2009 saw the publication of an
independent study that the FAS had commissioned:
An independent review commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) shows
that there are no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health
benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food. The focus
of the review was the nutritional content of foodstuffs. (...)
Dr Dangour, of the LSHTM‟s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit,
and the principal author of the paper, said: „A small number of differences in nutrient
content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced crops
and livestock, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review
indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over
conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.‟9
However, supporters of organic food were unconvinced:
Organic food campaigners criticised the study for failing to consider fertiliser and
pesticide residues in food. They expressed disappointment at its "limited" nature,
saying that without long-term studies it did not provide a clear answer on whether
eating organic food has health benefits. A leading food academic went further, saying
he found the conclusions "selective in the extreme".
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, said: "We are disappointed in the
conclusions the researchers have reached. It doesn't say organic food is not healthier,
just that, according to the criteria they have adopted, there's no proof that it is."
He criticised the methodology used by the team, which he said meant they rejected as
"not important" some nutritional benefits they found in organic food, and led them to
different conclusions from those reached by previous studies. Melchett said: "The
review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and
non-organic nutritional differences."10
5 Lords Debate on Organic Farming, January 2007
This debate was opened by Lord Taverne from a viewpoint hostile to organic farming. The
Ministerial reply by Lord Rooker gave the Defra view:
Organic cannot be one-size-fits-all. Some claims made on both sides of the argument
are quite ridiculous and are not based on any science. Nor do I subscribe to the anti-
science view around the country, particularly of those who do not want trials to take
place because they are worried about the information that might be gathered from
experiments. To that extent, I oppose and criticise the people who rip up crop trials.
How do we get information if we do not do trials? Not wanting the information to be out
there because it destroys one‟s original concepts or prejudices is not on.
I also want to make it clear that there is no unsafe food on sale in this country. I repeat:
no unsafe food is on sale. No one can make a claim that their food is safer than
anyone else‟s. Any unsafe food would be illegal if it was on sale. It is as simple as that.
9
FSA Press Release, Organic Review Published, 29 July 2009
10
“Organic food is no healthier, says official study: No evidence of significant nutritional benefits found Experts
question 'highly selective' conclusions”, Guardian, 30 July 2009
5

6. However food—whether it is crops or meat—is farmed or produced and wherever it is
produced in the world, there are checks and surveillances of residues and other
matters that are beyond the imagination of the public in terms of the numbers and the
quantity in the policing of the system to protect the whole food chain. We publish the
results, so there are no secrets, including where we buy produce from.
To that extent, John Krebs [former Chair of the Food Standards Agency] was right. No
one can say that because a food is organic it is healthier. It can be claimed that
because a food is organic there may be less chemical residue. But if the residues are
within the limits, they are perfectly safe. The two things are not incompatible. No one
can claim that commercially produced, ordinarily produced, intensively produced food
is any less safe than organic food. That cannot be the case. Going with the science is
important...
But that does not mean that the ordinary, intensively produced food, whether it is
grown or whether it is livestock, is second best. Nobody is saying that. In fact, we could
not feed ourselves if we went organic. I know that people will dispute this, but if we
went all organic we would be importing huge amounts of food, whatever people might
claim, because the yields would be so much less. I appreciate that one has to look at
the totality of the energy that is used. There would be fewer pesticides and other things
that are used to produce the crops if we went organic, but we want to encourage
choice…
The fact is that since we increased the level of support for organic farming, the amount
of land given over to it has gone up 13-fold. It helps our sustainability objectives and
provides environmental benefits—I know there can be arguments about this—by
encouraging biodiversity, and it gives farmers a choice. A lot of young farmers are
involved in the organic movement. They are often much more entrepreneurial than the
older generations. I have met some of them, as has the Secretary of State. These
farmers are willing to use different systems and techniques and to enter into new
marketing arrangements for their products...
At present, certain organic foods cannot use an organic label if the whole product is not
organic. Some of the ingredients may have been produced organically, but it is difficult
to get an organic label for them. The European Union is producing more flexible rules
to assist in that, which is good for organics, consumer choice and improvements in
labelling. The proposed regulation before the EU Agriculture Council would require
origin labelling for some organic produce where the EU organic logo is used. On the
organic conversion scheme, we are working on a new one which is to be launched
later this year…11
6 The 2007 Westminster Hall Debate on Organic Food
This debate was almost all devoted to criticisms of organic farming. Dr Brian Iddon opened
the attack:
Yields of organic crops are considerably lower than in conventional farming and more
land is taken up by organic crops…
In August 2007, the Crop Protection Association welcomed the Soil Association‟s
acknowledgement at Hay-on-Wye that organic farmers use pesticides, which it had
denied for most of its existence. Indeed, copper sulphate, pyrethrum—a nerve toxin
and potential carcinogen—and other chemicals used by organic farmers are probably
more dangerous to the environment than the pesticides used in modern farming.
11
HL Deb 25 January 2007 cc1315-18
6

7. Organic farmers would like us to believe that organic foods are uncontaminated by
chemicals when they are not. The organic pesticide rotenone, which is sold as Derris
powder, is highly toxic to humans, yet organic farmers are allowed to apply it right up to
harvest. It persists for a particularly long period on olives and is concentrated in olive
oil. Farm workers who spray solutions of bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium that
produces a protein that is toxic to caterpillars, have reported respiratory problems, and
it causes fatal lung infections in mice, yet organic farmers insist that what is natural is
safe and that synthetic chemicals are extremely toxic. That is nonsense.
Biocontrol of pests has been effective in some circumstances, especially for protecting
high-value crops grown in greenhouses, but biocontrol often involves the importation of
non-native species, with all the dangers that that might entail. (…)
Nor are organic foods safer than conventional foods. Organic foods grown in soil
fertilised with manure are at greater risk of being contaminated by mycotoxins, or fungi.
Fungal toxins are a particular problem in organic foods because all effective fungicides
are synthetic in origin and prohibited for use by the Soil Association. Copper sulphate
and sulphur, which are used, are far less effective. (…) Eggs without the Lion mark
are more likely to be contaminated with salmonella. A study in Denmark in 2001
showed that organic chicken is three times more likely to be contaminated with
campylobacter than conventional chicken …12
Phil Woolas, Minister for the Environment, was more sympathetic to organic food:
There is evidence that organic production is beneficial, on the whole, to biodiversity.
The mixed farming practised under organic systems also contributes to the quality of
the landscape and the beauty of rural areas.
The more general environmental picture, for example on the production of
greenhouses gases, is less clear-cut, with claims and counter-claims. However, there
is evidence that organic farming systems generally incur less energy use than
conventional systems. I shall explain that point. As has been said, it is important to
consider the production of fertilisers when calculating carbon footprints. One has to
consider lifestyle. The question that has to be asked—the debate has brought it up—is:
what is the balance between the environmental benefits of producing organic food and
the benefit of the farming methods used, many of which could also be used in
conventional, inorganic farming? That relates to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton,
South-East‟s central point.
Organic farming has its proponents, of whom the Government are one because of the
environmental benefits that we see from the evidence that is produced. I refer to the
scientific studies that have been carried out, on which our policy is partly based: the
DEFRA-commissioned study by Shepherd and others in 2002 and the English Nature-
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds study of 2003 by Hole and others. (…)13
7 Problems for organic farmers, 2008 to 2009
In December 2008, the Times reported that organic farmers were being hit by the credit
crunch and were requesting a relaxation of standards:
Sales of organic food slumped 10% in the 12 weeks up to the end of November (2008),
according to the latest figures from the consumer researchers TNS. Overall food sales
over the same period were up 6%. Organic certification bodies, including the soil
12
HC Deb 16 October 2007 cc187-8WH
13
HC Deb 16 October 2007 cc201-2WH
7

8. Association…asked Hilary Benn…last week for approval to relax the rules for an
indefinite period. They want their members to be able to use conventional animal feed
instead of organic food concentrate, which costs double. (…)
The move has been condemned by the Organic Research Centre, which fears that
organic “holidays” will confuse shoppers and lead to a further sales slump.14
14
“Let us bend the rules, say organic farmers”, Times, 22 December 2008
8