Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-10-Speech-4-071"
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"en.20050310.6.4-071"2
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"Mr President, I welcome this report on organic food and farming. The growth of this industry in some Member States is to be applauded, but it must be acknowledged that some Member States have provided less financial support than others. These include the United Kingdom, where nothing more than lip service has been paid to the development of organic farming. I realise that you cannot force people either to grow or to eat organic food. However, I strongly believe that you should encourage both, and that if the will is there the desire will be there too.
We now have an opportunity to encourage diversification. Following the mid-term review, farmers are looking for alternative ways to carry on their business. Unfortunately, I believe that leaving this to Member States would be a total disaster. Many will do nothing to either encourage demand or improve marketing for organic farming, which faces the same challenges as other branches of the industry, with the growing power of multinationals squeezing profit margins and dictating standards.
Organic production is no longer a niche market. It is the long-term future of agriculture. The support provided to organic farming should be used to help open up new opportunities for the sector and to create an alternative to so-called conventional farming. Both sectors have a future, side-by-side. Both must be mutual and complementary. The one thing I now see clearly is that there are no real level playing fields in agricultural production, be this organic or conventional, and I firmly believe you can only achieve this from the centre and with positive encouragement."@en1
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