IFOAM World Congress: From Bla-bla to Do-do!

Around 900 guests from 30 nations attended the opening ceremony of the18th IFOAM World Congress in the Istanbul Congress Center, where they were welcomed by the Turkish Minister of Agriculture, Mevlüt Gümüs. FAO representative Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, who reminded the audience that it’s the Year of Family Farming, conveyed greetings from the Director of the FAO and then emphasized that there was still much urgent work to be done in order to guarantee food security. She stressed that they were already working closely with IFOAM and that this work was to be developed to create global cooperation for the benefit of organic farming. (Picture on left: FAO representative Nadia El-Hage Scialabba would like to see even closer cooperation with IFOAM)

(Pictures: Impressions of the opening ceremony:  With background music, Günesin Aydemir tells a moving story about the pomegranate tree. The moderator remembers Viktor Ananias. The delegation from the Ministry of Agriculture at the opening ceremony)











 

The slogan of the day was coined by Yemi Akinbamijo: "We’ve got to move urgently from bla-bla to do-do. Nobody can eat potentials", exclaimed the Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) at the end of his speech about the huge challenges ahead as we try to achieve food security. He strongly advocated the holistic approach of organic farming that had in particular to be adapted to the needs of small farmers.
(Picture on right: Yemi Akinbamijo demands a shift from bla-bla to do-do)
 

The former deputy American Minister of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan, pointed to the opportunities for organic movement worldwide. During her time in office, Merrigan launched the "Know your Farmer" initiative, and she advocated local structures. She recounted the success story of the organic industry in the USA. She said this development and the many committed people repeatedly inspired her, but there was still a great deal to be done. She stressed that “the organic movement needs pro-innovation and pro-science", and she added that what the industry needed above all was young people. Her plea was therefore wholly in keeping with the IFOAM motto "Build Bridges": "The big bridge we have to build is to the next generation." (Picture on left: The speakers were introduced by IFOAM Managing Director Markus Arbenz, the Turkish environmental activist Blogger Uygar Ozesmi and Frank Eyhorn, IFOAM Board)
 

Christian Felber, the “inventor“ of the economy of common good presented the basic features of his model of a new economic order. In his opinion, a fundamental system change at global level is essential if we are to move to a viable, sustainable model of society. According to surveys, 90 % of interviewees want the system to change! Currently, 1,700 firms in 15 countries are active in the common good movement, and around 200 have implemented the common good matrix. Last week, Christian Felber received the getAbstract International Book Award 2014 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. His “Geld. Die neuen Spielregeln“ (Money. The New Rules) was rated the best business book of the year. (Picture on right: Christian Felber presenting his much acclaimed common good model)

The climax of the opening ceremony was a moving performance with music in which Günesin Aydemir recounted the story, passed down orally, of the pomegranate tree. The pomegranate is the symbol of Bugday and the IFOAM Congress – a symbol of fertility, variety and diversity, and of the organic movement.

(Video: Interview with IFOAM World Board member Frank Eyhorn and IFOAM Executive Director Markus Arbenz)
 

With roughly 80 individual events (with the pre-conferences around 100), the programme offered everyone with an interest in organic agriculture, marketing and research myriad opportunities to access information. The emphasis was specifically on themes to do with plant and animal production, but the legal framework conditions, controls in organic farming, the trade and the organization of producers and consumers in associations was discussed in detail too.
 

Participants from around a dozen countries were represented at the lectures on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Interesting examples from the USA, China and Croatia were presented. A representative from the Urgenci Network in France gave a worldwide overview from which the audience learned that over a million consumers, principally in the USA, France and Japan, are already organized in this special form of cooperation between farmers and consumers. There are individual projects in many other countries, like Germany, although they are on a much smaller scale than in the three countries named above. But who would have thought that CSA exists in China too? Because of numerous food scandals in recent years, about 500 initiatives, involving roughly 1000 farmers, have been launched. This was reported by Shi Yan (picture on left), a farmer from Peking, in a lively and well illustrated presentation in fluent English. (Picture on right: Kiera Mulvey Bulan presented statistics on CSA in the USA) 
 

One of the ten workshops and the Congress, that took place in parallel, dealt with transparency, verification and integrity in the organic value chain. Gerald Herrmann (picture on left), from the consultancy Organic Services, maintained that the organic scandals in the past led not only to a loss of credibility with the consumer but in some cases also caused economic damage to the firms directly and indirectly affected. He said it made sense therefore to invest in prevention. He introduced a “Check Organic” software solution that the Italian manufacturer’s association FederBio has recently started using to monitor the flow of cereals. Jochen Neuendorf showed the advantages of “Bio C”, that records 35,000 organic farms across the whole of Europe and the certificates issued to them by inspection organizations. The new feature of Bio C is that it now has a blacklist of withdrawn certificates.
 

Contributions from the USA, the Netherlands and Thailand provided more information on improving the traceability of organic certificates. The crucial issue in all cases is that traceability is kept up to date via online systems. “The times when holding an inspection certificate up in the air are past.“ What was valid yesterday can be obsolete today because the certificate had to be revoked. The industry already has a problem when, after withdrawal of organic approval, it takes weeks or months to make this fact known - a period of time in which fraudsters can get to work. This is why people are working with different methods and in different places to ensure that this time is kept as short as possible. (Picture: Long queues waiting to register on the first day of the Congress)

Tip:
www.owc2014.org