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Recommendations summarised from the Report of Els Wynen 1. To increase sustainability and food security, organic agriculture, being a proven production method with many benefits which cannot or are difficult to provide with conventional agricultural methods, need to be given serious and much wider attention for research and education to permit farmers everywhere, an informed choice from ALL available agricultural methods. 2. FAO should increase visibility and credibility of proven organic methods by giving particular support to activities such as points 3, 6, 7 and 8 below. 3. Network cooperation on selected subject areas should be promoted by FAO not only for research, but also for extension and inspection services. 4. FAO can make a leading contribution to standardisation of comparable data collection which will be of great benefit to researchers, extensionists and producers. 5. An expert list with specific focus on FAO collaboration in developing countries should be assembled. 6. FAO should include data on organic agriculture production and trade in its annual statistics. 7. Quality and other parameters for organic products should be included in the Codex Alimentarius. 8. Technical consultations and meetings focusing in part or as a whole on organic farming practices should be organized with joint support from FAO, national and international research institutions, NGOs and IGOs. 9. FAO should, through better collaboration with NGOs and research institutions, use its excellent information distribution system to disseminate special studies, research results and practical advice on organic agriculture. 10. FAO should include in all its activities and assistance programmes (technical, finance and policy) a serious evaluation of sustainability and environmental impact to compare conventional to non-conventional agricultural methods, such as organic agriculture, not only in its individual elements but also as a whole system. |
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Principal recommendations from the Expert Roundtable in addition to those from the Report, which were accepted as presented in the Report of Els Wynen 11. FAO and SREN should establish a research working group on "Research Methodologies in Organic Farming" for the purpose of identifying, defining and standardising research methodologies for an holistic, interdisciplinary approach. 12. FAO/REU should give full secretarial and financial support to the agreed agenda of the SREN working group and its future programme activities. 13. Considering the increasing significance and special needs of organic farming, i.e. whole farm system experiments and above all an holistic, interdisciplinary experimental design, the establishment of a full fledged research network under ESCORENA or other FAO programmes should be urgently considered. |
