Can Organic Farming Feed the World
Elm Farm Research Centre For Organic Principles & Best Practice HEALTH, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY – THE ORGANIC DILEMMA Lawrence Woodward, Director of Elm Farm Research Centre 1, Dr. David Fleming 2, Prof. Dr. Hardy Vogtmann 3 A discussion on the conflicts and dilemma posed by the global economy on the principles of health and sustainability. A review of the organic movement's response and suggestions for the way forward. Given at the 11th International IFOAM Conference in Copenhagen , Denmark, August 1996. 1 Elm Farm Research Centre. 2 The Strategy Workshop. 3 Hessisches Landesamt fur Regionalentwicklung und Landwirtschaft. Colin Fisher, the co-chairman of the first IFOAM Conference which was held in Sissach in Switzerland in 1977, began the final summary to the conference by quoting the words of Poincare "To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." (Fisher 1978). Nearly twenty years on is a good time to reflect on what this international movement has achieved, where it has been and where it seems set to go. But what is a movement? The synonyms are more relevant than the definition; action, activity, advance, agitation, campaign, change, crusade, development, faction, ground swell, grouping, operation, organisation, party, progress, stirring. It implies agreement between people to move towards change; it implies challenge; it implies a dynamic and it implies a goal. That first conference concluded that IFOAM was seeking to "provide an articulate informed and coherent alternative to contemporary agricultural dogma...(and)...provide further impetus for both the research into, and the practice of, methods of husbandry which are based on the ethic of satisfying need and the obligation to do so by technologies that our planet can sustain." (Fisher 1978).
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