from the Guardian in March:

Adam says that the pressure leads management sometimes to behave almost inhumanely. He tells a story by way of illustration: "One day I got a call from a store manager in Manchester, saying that four men armed with shotguns had just come in and robbed the store. He said that he thought they had got away with �2,000, and wanted to know what form he needed to fill in to explain when cashing up why the tills were going to be two grand down that night.

"It was only when I asked about the girl who had been on the checkout they robbed that it became clear that she was still sitting there, expected to carry on working. Not only that, but he hadn't called the police either. He had called me first, wanting to know what the armed robbery meant for his admin duties. This is what being a manager at Lidl does to you: it makes you so hard that when you're involved in an armed robbery, instead of being terrified, you just feel like saying to the robbers, 'You have no idea how much harder you have made my day; how much extra paperwork I am going to have to do now.'"

Wow. Well worth reading, is the article on LIDI, their secrecy and their staff relations

Are organic pioneers different to recent organic converts, and if so, how?

One of the most common clich�s of organic farming is that once it was wholesome and now it is in some way less pure. Once, organic farmers toiled away, for little or no money, with only the environment and the planet in mind. Today, so the story goes, organic farmers are at best vaguely committed and wary of the old image of organics, at worst only in it for the money.

This notion of previous purity and current callousness has a long lineage. Throughout time, everyone seemed to worry that in their day, things were decent, but nowadays, things are in some way more corrupt, decadent, mean-spirited or possessed by some other foible.

In my own research into the history of the organic movement in Ireland, I constantly encountered people who felt that they were there at this pure starting point. Often, people who started farming in the 1980s and early 1990s seemed to feel this way. Yet there was an organic movement in the 1970s too � Rod Alston, Charlotte and Ben Colchester and the like started then, and others too who have since stopped.

But before them, there were people like Anthony Kay, whom I also interviewed. He brought his biodynamic bread to the launch of the Irish branch of the Soil Association in the 1950s in Dublin. And he worked on an organic farm and stud that had been card-carrying organic, indeed biodynamic, since the 1930s, called Kilmurry.

But still, this notion of being the first, and being the most pure, persists. Inevitably, researchers who study the area argue over whether the movement�s values get watered down. This argument has run since 1997 in particular, when Buck et al developed the notion of conventionalisation.

This conventionalisation of organic agriculture thesis suggests that in a variety of important ways, the organic movement more and more resembles conventional agriculture, and that this trend is inevitable.

Conventionalisation suggests that organic standards would be lowered by the arrival of larger agri-business, that agri-business would appropriate profits which would pressurise farmers, and that organic agriculture, faced by these treats, would become more and more like conventional agriculture.

So broader agro-economic and socio-environmental values, certified standards, allowable inputs would all be modified or weakened: issues around power, control and distribution would be make organic �organic lite� � not in any important way different from conventional agriculture in how it is produced of distributed, or in it�s overall effects on the environment or society.

A massive and heated debate over this conventionalisation thesis developed amongst researchers since 1997. While many arguments for and against have been put forward, today I�m going to focus on just one � values.

Suzanne Padel, in a piece soon to be published, considers the issue of values: Do organic farmers today have weaker values than those of yesteryear? Padel actually interviewed organic farmers from five European countries: Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Switzerland.

She suggests that newly converting and the earlier, pioneering organic farmers do not neatly divide into two groups, with the pure old guard and the money-minded new recruits. In fact, and despite the statements by established organic farmers about newly converted farmers only being motivated by money, very few noteworthy differences were detected between the two groups.

Instead, she suggests that the complexities of conversion to organic, as well as the specific circumstances of their farming categories are more important than any personal characteristics.

While newly converting farmers acknowledged the benefit of grant aid, they denied vehemently that this was their only motivation. Newly converting producers seemed concerned with organic farming keeping pace with general developments in agriculture - environmental conservation, animal welfare and consumer expectations. Organic farming as an alternative and as an educational tool were also emphasised by this group.

The old guard were more closed, like their farming systems. They were (indeed are) concerned primarily with the soil and the land. Closed production cycles and farming systems values, such as overall farm soil health were emphasised by this group.

So is this the case in Ireland? Have a look in the examiner next thursday an see what the a selection of organic farmers in Ireland think ofof Suzanne's research

(also, if you want to see the full research, then it will be published in the first 2008 edition of the International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology.)

Spirituality, self-sufficiency, selling and the split: a brief potted history of organic farming in Ireland

Here's an article on organic organisations in Ireland, and how they developed from the 1980s to today. It is a linear and political take - I may contribute a cultural take sometime soon. This is essentially a v short history of IOFGA - the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association. As it happens, according to Anthony Kay (one of Ireland's genuinely pioneering organic farmers) a branch of the Soil Association was established in the 1950s in Ireland. He baked some bread for the event.

IOFGA was set up at a sequence of meetings in the early 1980s. Then, it was called IOGA (i.e. The Irish Organic Growers Association), which reflects just how important vegetable growers were to the movement back then. The grand total of 6 people attended the first meeting. Long haired, beardy men and shaven-headed women sat around on bales of hay in Rod Alston's place, Eden Plants in Rossinver County Leitrim. 40-odd attended another gathering in Blackcastle Co.Meath. By 1984, 2-300 hundred attended a three-day conference in Glencree (Wicklow). The name was soon changed to IOFGA.

Before the mid 1980s, the vast majority of organic producers in Ireland were homesteading migrants. By the mid 1980s, native born Irish farmers like Gerry Brown (a vet from Roscommon) and Michael Hickey (a beef farmer from Tipperary) were entering the fold. Bigger enterprises were being established, like Ballybrado farm. IOFGA had 350 members by 1986, but few of these were full time farmers.

A gradual but unmistakable divide was forming in the 1980s, between commercially-minded farmers who saw both the commercial and environmental merit in larger-scale organic sales, and those more interested in a smaller, but 'purer' environmentalism and alternative living.

In the Winter of 1991, a personality-driven split occurred. While there were genuine differences between the two camps, things didn't work out as simply as you might expect.

People who stayed with IOFGA were concerned that there was a conflict of interest in the Irish Organic Inspectorate(IOI). The IOI were the organic certifiers at the time. The only people who could possibly know enough to certify organic produce were those directly involved in the sector. So this controversial situation was unavoidable. The move away from alternative living and a feeling that the inspectorate was behaving in an elitist and unaccountable manner were also cited as being problematic by some.

Those that went on to form the Organic Trust (OT) were, in the main, committed to larger-scale organic production. They worried about inspection standards, a particularly nationalistic logo which was in use from 1987-1991, xenophobia against blow-ins, careerism in IOFGA and the emergence of possibly weak national standards with emerging Irish government interest in the sector: the much maligned Charlie Haughey actually gave substantial support to the sector in 1991, and actually farmed Kinsealy organically.

None of this went smoothly, as you can imagine; IOFGA represented many, often divergent interests: alternative living, environmentalism and rural native Irish farmers. Also, it was the body which received state support. Organic Trust represented the biggest producers in the land, but were in a legal vacuum for a few years. In what was a very symbolic act, the Ballybrado farm, perhaps the most visible landmark on the organic map, was split in two.

Slowly, the woulds began to heal. In 1996, equalisation between the IOFGA and OT standards occurred. The organic sector grew, with around 1000 producers and around 30,000 hectares of certified land by the end of the century. Today, IOFGA represent about 2/3 of producers, and the Organic Trust about 1/3. People tend to join either IOFGA or OT without any real reference to what are now largely the political differences of the past.

That said, IOFGA still carries out more political work - whiel Organic Trust members are also anti-GM, IOFGA members have been to the forefront of the anti-GM campaign. They also produce the magazine, Organic Matters. Organic Trust still claim to certify the bigger producers and an overall larger amount of produce, but maintian a fairly low profile otherwise.

IOFGA is now located at Newtownforbes, Co. Longford, (T) 043 42495 (F) 043 42496 (E)iofga@eircom.net.

Organic Trust is at Vernon House, 2 Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3, Tel/Fax: +353-1-853 0271, email organic@iol.ie

organic farming and climate change

Following on from the recent article critically examining the DEFRA/MBS report on the sustainability/carbon footprint of organic food, have a look at this article, which appeared in the Irish Examiner a couple of weeks ago.

There are two ways to look at the effect of organic farming on climate change. One is to look at the effect of current organic production on climate change. The other is to conduct field trails that compare organic and conventional farming systems.

A fundamental problem with the former is that presently organic farming accounts for only 3% of the EU�s farming. In this context, it is inevitable that in a certified, traceable system the movement of agri-inputs and the use of various certified, traceable processes occasionally increases the organic system�s greenhouse gas emissions. As an example, organic farmers have to source guaranteed GM-free manure, rather than just use any available local source, as was the case before a percentage of GM ingredients was added to most winter feed rations on conventional farms.

In order to better asses the potential of farming systems to contribute to or take away from global warming, scenario comparisons need to be done. Comparing a world where food is produced organically to one where it is produced conventionally is far more useful than the fundamentally truncated and inevitably misleading 3% scenario.

This is especially important in the context of global warming: food production both contributes to it - 25-30% of global warming by most reckonings - and will be effected by it. Specific agriculturally-related changes include changes in what can be produced where; rising tides; increases in temperature with various regional variations (in Ireland, this includes a split between the already wet west getting wetter and the relatively dry east getting drier); increased droughts and increased cyclones. It goes without saying that each of these effects has knock-on effects, encompassing aspects as divergent as insurance premiums, holiday homes and diets.

Field trials allow for the study of something other than organic farming in the current 3% scenario. In these trials it is possible to, literally, compare organic and conventional worlds of farming.

Various field trials have been highlighted before in this diary. Other more recent research was presented in February at Biofach 2007 by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). This week and next, some of the key findings will be presented.

Dr. Andreas Fliessbach made a presentation on the scientific evidence of the role of organic agriculture in climate change, based mainly on field trials (the DOK trails) in Switzerland. Fliessbach first points to the lack of mineral fertilizer use in the organic system. Mineral fertilizer production necessitates large amounts of fossil fuel.

Carbon sequestering (locking carbon away, rather than allowing it to enter the atmosphere) emerges from his research as one of the major benefits of the organic system. He cites Swiss research that finds lower levels of energy use in an organic system: 46-49% lower when compared to conventional mineral fertilizer systems, and 31-35% lower when compared to conventional manure based systems.

Because energy use is not the only cause of greenhouse gases in agriculture, he compares the greenhouse gas production of organic and conventional systems. Organic farming�s �greenhouse warming potential� is 29-32% lower than conventional mineral fertilizer systems, and 35-37% lower than in conventional manure systems.

Because the ozone depleting nitrous oxide is inevitably released with nitrogen application, the lower levels applied in the organic system also emerged as beneficial. Likewise, the lower stocking rates of animals, as well as their use as a source of manure and their generally more integrated role on an organic farm emerged as beneficial.

Fliessbach concludes by summarising the various climate change reducing dimensions of the organic system. These are resource limitation; optimisation of manure use; crop rotations; mixed livestock and crop production systems; temporal or permanent grass-clover; and set-asides, extensification programmes and ecological measures.

Next week, more of the FiBL research on organic farming and climate will be presented.

To access the FiBl research into organic farming and climate change, go here, click on news and then click on the relevant link.

If you come here to see what's on, I'd also recommend having a look over at matt reed's blog, for Matt always seems up to date with what's going on in the world of organics....
there today, I learned that more research has come out suggesting that organic is more nutritious....like Matt, I'm a bit skeptical about this sort of research, though I have written the odd article in this vein before myself....
when I did write one for the Irish Times in this style, I got some positive feedback from various places. Two valid criticisms, or additions to the debate, were the following:

1: essentially it's v difficult to really compare the products - you have to take into account so many issues (distance, age of product, size of farm, crop rotation used, and some of these aren't strictly comparable between conventional and organic)
2: Science should also look at the subjective effect of both conventional and organic over a period of time on an individual, not just 'product x vs product y'.

As a further addition, you should then really start to look at how the products are used differently by consumers in a variety of settings, e.g. the home (Lockie et al 2002 quotes consumers who used to let conventional veg go off at the back of the press, but wouldn't dream of doing this to their organic veg...why does this happen and what does it mean?)

And then we have the age old problem of organic embedded into a world of conventional distribution, trying to maintain it's own certs and standards, which add to organic food miles and thus to the age of organic products, while only being a 4ish% of food production accross the EU...how would organic and conventional compare nutritionally if they each had all the inputs and processes necessary within each, or more importantly comparable reach of their respective places of production?

News: European parliment votes against the 0.9% GM threshold in organic food, opting instead for 0.1%, i.e. the detection rate. This doesn't mean that that's the end of the story, just that the debate goes on and the parliment have sent a strong signal to the Commission that...

A: the GM threshold should be as low as possible
B: the parliment want's more power in legislating on organic farming and food in the EU (beyond consultative)

See the parliment's press release and some background

full article in the Irish Examiner thursday 12th on the issue