Avalon Foundation promotes organic agriculture in Eastern Europe

As we reported in an earlier article, Kai Kreuzer from Organic-Market.Info interviewed Martien Lankester at the organic conference in Georgia (see our earlier report). The Dutchman created the Avalon Foundation in 1991, and it now has an annual turnover of 1.5 million euros. The Foundation has supported projects in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and in the Balkans and has also launched its first project in Africa.
The Avalon Foundation is currently financing projects in nine countries, an example being the creation of marketing structures for organic products in the four republics in the Caucasus.
(Picture: Martien Lankester)
“The spark that ignited my commitment to Eastern Europe was an organic conference in Budapest in the summer of 1990,” says the 60-year-old Lankester. Before that, he had been engaged in Demeter work in Holland for 20 years, but he then decided to operate independently, and this led to him setting up the Foundation.
“We are very pleased that we can now send experts from those countries we first worked with to be advisers in our new projects,” he explains. For example, he sent a Bulgarian as an adviser to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. For the countries that were added to his list after the political upheaval in 1990, the development of organic agriculture is much more recent than in Western Europe, and this means that there is plenty of practical experience that can be passed on. (Picture: Tree nursery in Azerbaijan)

Lankester reports enthusiastically on the “Business and Biodiversity” enterprise in the White Carpathians in the border area between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Called “Orchid-Beef”, the organisation has been created to market organic beef from the locality, where 26 species of orchid grow. “The project has been so successful that the supermarket chain that takes our beef has placed much bigger orders for next year,” he is delighted to report. “We’re now thinking about how to increase production but without changing our extensive grazing.” (Picture: Project: “Farmers Fighting Desertification”, Azerbaijan)

Avalon regards itself primarily as a provider of capital and know-how. When enquiries come from countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia regarding finance, a suitable donor is sought. Examples are the EU Directorate General for the Environment, the Dutch Lottery, various ministries in Holland, Oxfam Novib and Oxfam Great Britain. Avalon is a member of IFOAM and IUNC and is supervised by the Dutch Central Bureau for Fundraising.

Avalon funds seminars and conferences (for example, the Organic Marketing Forum in Warsaw and the Organic Academy in the Czech Republic), attendance at trade fairs (for example, Organic Africa pavilion at BioFach) and network meetings (for example, the European Network of Organic Agriculture Students – ENOAS).
Another example: Avalon covers the cost of translating seven languages that include Russian, Polish, English, Hungarian and Slovene for Ekoconnect, the “International Centre for Organic Farming in Central and Eastern Europe” that has its headquarters in Dresden. The Centre issues useful information in the form of a quarterly circular. (Picture: Model farm producing organic roses in Afghanistan)

In 2008, projects in the following countries were financed and in some cases were helped to run operations: Turkey (161,000 euros), (Azerbaijan (77,000), Armenia (35,000), Moldavia (34,000), Georgia (28,000), Russia (26,000) Siberia (9,000) and Tajikistan (3,000). The objective in a new project in Ghana in West Africa is to introduce young people between 16 and 20 in an SOS children’s village to the principles of organic agriculture, so that they can later feed themselves and help to spread the organic message. The headquarters of Avalon is in Wommels in Dutch Friesland and in Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Eight of the nine staff work in Wommels and the other one in the Bulgarian office. Nico van derWerf is head of projects. (Picture: Shepherd in Afghanistan)

Although Avalon facilitates many projects with finance and/or experts brought in from outside, it also implements projects of its own. For example, at the end of September 2009, a network meeting was arranged for the 150 organisations from the 28 countries that have been or still are involved with Avalon. Representatives from between 50 and 60 organisations took part in the event, that addressed political lobbying and participatory training methods. The meeting was held from 26 to 27 September in Sofia in Bulgaria. (Picture: Training on experimental plots in Ghana)

Issues dealt with on the first day were participatory environmental education, ecology and organic farming. They will also discuss and demonstrate the role of simulation games in environmental education. On the last day, the topics were establishing networks, lobbies and promoting organic agriculture. (Picture on right: SOS children’s village project in Ghana)

Following this event, two Avalon conferences will be held on 28-29 September and on 30 September to 1 October, the first dealing with “Climate Change and Organic Agriculture” and the second with “Organic Agriculture, Business and Biodiversity”. Further information on these conferences is available at www.avalon-conference.org.

Information and reports on projects can be found in: 
Tip: Avalon’s annual report

Contact: Mail

Telephone: +31 (0)515 331955

(Picture: Palm oil extraction in Ghana)