Commercial Organics still in decline.

[Johnboy]

According to DEFRA, Commercial Organics have for the fifth successive year decreased both in land base and producers.
The organic land base has decreased by 5%.
By area vegetables have decreased by 7.5% whilst fruit has decreased by 3.5%.
Organic vegetables now make up 8.7% and fruit 6.2% of the UK total growing areas.
Organic accounts for less than 1% of the UK Potato growing area.
The total number of organic producers fell by 6.8%.
These are all quite dramatic decreases and now all the public money poured into organic intervention over the years has been totally lost!
In March of this year The Soil Association reported a rise of almost 3% in demand for organic products and suggested that inadequate UK supplies could lead to higher imports. Mathematics has never been the Soil Association’s strong point and as usual are stating “the bleeding obvious”!
I wonder where the problem lies!
JB.

[alan refail]

Accepting reality is also not one of SA's strong points either!

All news is good news apparently!

http://www.soilassociation.org/marketreport

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
I can imagine the captain of the Titanic saying what a wonderful ship it is as he lost his life when it sank!
Same meat different gravy with the SA me thinks.
I think that the time has come for the SA to take a very hard look at their policies and embrace GM for the good science it is. They do not have to adopt GM merely stop knocking it.
There are anti-blight treatments conventionally used which are more organic than organic but producers are not allowed to use them hence the less than 1% share of the UK potato growing area.
I think it is all very sad. As a prime mover in the early days of organic growing and being strictly organic for nearly 40 years I strongly dislike where organic are heading for. I gave up organics in the late 1980's
as to my way of thinking they were going backwards rather than forward with the times. This has accelerated over the last ten years and actually gone into decline in the last five. So sad.
JB.

[alan refail]

The Soil Association appears to have dropped themselves in it big time in Australia by approving FSC certification for logging ancient forests in Western Australia.

http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/pr ... old-trees/