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European Organic Farming Research
AboutOrganic farming research is organised differently in the European countries. Until the 1980s it was mainly carried out by private research institutes, which have been the driving force for the development of organic farming research since the 1920s. In the 1980s the first universities took organic farming on their curricula, in the 1990s the first EU-funded projects on organic farming contributed to a better collaboration of researchers on organic farming on a European level, and the first state research institutes became active. Today's high political and societal acceptance and interest in organic farming research is reflected in the fact that the organic farming research is substantially funded by the European Union and that the European action plan for organic food and farming stresses the importance of organic farming research. Many national action plans include special programs for organic farming research. For instance in Germany the Federal Organic Farming Scheme BOEL has a dedicated research part, and in Denmark the Danish Research Center for Organic Farming DARCOF, now International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems ICROFS ) has been running since 1996. At the state research
institutions organic farming is getting increasing attention in many
countries, for instance In France the National
Agricultural Research Institute INRA now has an organic farming
co-ordination group (Comité
Interne Agriculture Biologique CIAB). The German
Federal Agricultural Research Institute FAL has one research
institute dedicated to organic farming research. Since the mid 1990s several organic farming research projects have been funded under the framework programmes of the European Commission. The European Commission has also organised several seminars on organic farming research in Europe and at these seminars the situation of organic farming research was documented extensively for the first time.
With the ERA Net project CORE Organic cooperation among funders of research programmes has increased, and detailed country reports about the participating countries are available from this project. CORE Organic uses the Organic Eprints archive to document organic farming research in Europe. In recent years this archive has developed as a major tool for communication about organic farming in Europe, and it holds more than 6000 entries. International cooperation in organic farming research takes place in the framework of the International Society of Organic Farming Research ISOFAR. Recently several conferences have taken place documenting the current status of European organic farming research.
Relevant documents and linksKey information resources & links
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