9/7/08

Guidelines for successful organic action plan development and evaluation welcomed in Brussels

The European Commission and EU member states have welcomed a new manual and toolbox for use with organic food and farming action plans, presented to the meeting of the Standing Committee on Organic Farming in Brussels on 2 July.

Nic Lampkin from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University, who led the work on the development of the toolbox, said: “Policy evaluation is now well-established as a tool to ensure more effective policies and actions by governments. We have been able to link specific perspectives on organic food and farming and organic action plans to the policy evaluation frameworks used by the Commission and by EU member states, to create what we hope will prove a useful tool to aid development of better policies for organic food and farming in Europe.”

The manual and toolbox are the main outputs of the EU-funded ORGAP project, which was set up to help evaluate the EU action plan for organic food and farming. Otto Schmid from the Swiss Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, who co-ordinated the project, said: ‘The project partnership has worked for three years to understand the success factors involved in action plans, building on experiences gained in previous research, and from engagement with stakeholders involved in national action plans. The manual with its “Golden Rules” for the successful development, monitoring and evaluation of action plans represents a valuable resource for all those engaged in this type of work. We acknowledge very much the financial support of the European Commission under the 6th Research Framework Programme for this project.”

Rex Humphrey, a producer member of the Northern Ireland organic action plan group, found the manual ‘easy to read and very informative’ and recommended that all members of action plan groups should ‘find the time to read it as it would help thought processes when putting together action plans’.

The Organic Action Plan Evaluation Toolbox (ORGAPET), which accompanies the manual and is also available on-line, provides an in-depth guide to the steps that need to be taken, and the issues that need to be addressed, in evaluating organic action plans. The toolbox proposes a range of indicators that can be used to cover the many different objectives of action plans, and considers how stakeholder involvement can be encouraged and evaluated.

The manual and toolbox can be ordered or downloaded from the project website: www.orgap.org. 

ENDS

Further information:

Dr Nic Lampkin, Director, Organic Centre Wales, Aberystwyth University, Tel. 01970 622248, e-mail nhl@aber.ac.uk

Notes for editors

The European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming was launched by the European Commission in 2004. For details, see http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/qual/organic/plan/index_en.htm

Many European countries have developed national or regional Organic Action Plans to promote and support organic agriculture. Details can be found on the ORGAP website: www.orgap.org.

The EU-funded ORGAP project, “European Action Plan of Organic Food and Farming - Development of criteria and procedures for the evaluation of the EU Action Plan for Organic Agriculture” (www.orgap.org) was started in 2005 and completed this year. The background research leading to the development of the manual and toolbox included reviews of the content and evaluations of national actions plans, workshops with stakeholders to identify relevant issues and indicators for evaluation, and the testing of the toolbox in the context of the EU organic action plan.

The partners involved in the ORGAP project were:

Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) (Switzerland),

Aberystwyth University, Institute of Rural Sciences (Wales),

University of Hohenheim, Department of Farm Economics (Germany),

University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Department of Political Science and Public Management (Denmark),

Polytechnic University of Marche (DIIGA) (Italy),

IFOAM EU-Group (Brussels, Belgium),

Institute for Sustainable Development (Slovenia),

Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (VÚZE) (Czech Republic),

Agricultural and Rural Development Department, Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) (The Netherlands),

Sociedad Española de Agricultura Ecológica (SEAE) (Spain).

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