Soil Association Certification’s Organic Trade Conference hosted an exciting line-up of speakers including Daniel Zeichner MP, Shadow Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries and keynote speaker, Dr Tasmin Edwards, Professor of Climate Change, King’s College London and Mike Watkins, Head of Retailer and Business Insight, NielsenIQ.
The Soil Association Group used the annual trade conference to share its vision for ‘Organic For All’– an ambitious new approach for scaling organic production and consumption in the UK. Its aim to make organic affordable, available and accessible to everyone in society built on a strategy engaging everyone within the industry to create an organic action plan.
The organisation has mapped a pathway to negotiate the many complex and inherent challenges that the sector faces to make organic truly affordable, available and accessible to everyone in society. While the organic sector has enjoyed over a decade of sustained growth this year’s conference is facing up to the problem that it is not fulfilling its full potential here in the UK – and this needs to change – rapidly.
Soil Association Associate Director Standards Innovation Sarah Compson said: “The organic sector has plenty to be proud of and offers genuine solutions to the climate, nature and health crises with its globally scalable approach to food and farming. But here in the UK we have hit a bit of a wall.
“Organic food isn’t affordable, available or accessible to everyone in society. It is too niche and regrettably we do not share the same aspirations as our European neighbours where the EU has its 25% organic land target and ambitious policies and incentives to drive organic production.”
The conference also explored the challenges and opportunities for this new vision for organic and the conditions necessary to build a successful plan. This included an overview of the current organic market, the political and economic opportunities and examples of how organic is successfully scaling in parts of Europe.
Sarah Compson said: “Over the next few months we want to talk to the organic sector, to develop our plans together and uplift and link great work already happening, and plan new activities that drive the shared outcomes we want to see. We want your feedback on the plan and to know which areas you would be interested in being involved evolving – you can share your views here https://form.typeform.com/to/M5JPLWgd