Organic cash stampede slows
16 February 2001
Organic cash stampede slows
By FWi staff
FOLLOWING an early rush, applications to join the Governments flagship organic conversion scheme have steadied, says junior farm minister Elliot Morley.
Within three weeks of reopening in January, applications had been received for 3 million of the 13m available under the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS).
That early stampede included would-be organic farmers who lost out last year when the OFS was oversubscribed within months.
“At the moment the scheme is open and we are accepting all comers,” Mr Morley told the BBC Radio 4 Farming Today programme.
“Although weve had an initial rush, thats died off a bit, and so the number of people coming in has been quite steady.”
Last month the Commons Agriculture Select Committee criticised the start-stop funding of the scheme.
The cross-party group of MPs said farmers were losing out to overseas competitors because funding uncertainty hampered long-term planning.
Mr Morley was speaking at organic trade fair, Bio Fach 2001 in Nuremberg, Germany, where Britain featured as country of the year.
While less than 2.5% of UK farmland is under organic production, Mr Morley said Britain has the fastest-growing organic sector in the EU.
Huge growth was being recorded in manufacturing and marketing and sales as well as primary production, he said.
During his visit Mr Morley met new German minister for consumer protection, food and agriculture Renate Künast.
He said they had found a lot of common ground and together would push for reforms in the Common Agricultural Policy.
Moves towards paying agri-environment rather food production subsidies would speed up as a result of the new green approach in German policy, he said.
Efforts to shift the CAP this way have in the past been frustrated by a powerful German/French alliance.