From farm to fork to pocket

So it's an urgent problem to tackle. The good news is, better farming methods can dramatically reduce this impact while building more resilient food systems. 

This is where the EU-funded OrganicClimateNet project comes in, uniting organic farms across Europe to lead the charge on climate-conscious, sustainable agriculture. Fact is, organic farming is no longer a nice-to-have: it’s becoming a global necessity. 

To learn more about the challenges, opportunities and smart solutions, we caught up with Sabine Reinecke of FiBL Switzerland and OrganicClimateNet Project Coordinator.

With our focus on “organic climate farming,” we take an integrated view of organic farming principles with climate farming practices in agriculture. 

Principally, organic farming promotes a healthy planet, integrates ecological systems and natural cycles with the production of food. Organic promotes healthy soils, biodiversity, and several other critical co-benefits. 

Most importantly, organic farms are more than just agricultural practices. They are functionally integrated systems with built-in resilience. This isn’t trivial when looking at the challenges that climate change poses to the production of food worldwide. 
In practical terms, organic farmers often apply mitigation practices because they make sense within this overall farming system. For example, to promote healthy soils for increasing yields and income. With higher soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and an enhanced carbon holding capacity, organic soils are mitigating climate change and its impacts more effectively. 

With this dual role for climate change mitigation and adaptation, organic climate farming can actually play a vital (or even pivotal) role in securing food for 10 billion people in a changing climate. By addressing poverty and hunger as key drivers of violent conflict or migration, climate-resilient farming systems can help to maintain the profitability and economic stability of the sector, securing rural livelihoods and enhancing independence from volatile international markets. 

Last, but not least, climate-resilient organic farming systems secure the permanent provision of a range of system-relevant environmental co-benefits.

For the (established) organic farmers in the OrganicClimateNet project, a major challenge is not dropping out of organic markets where demand for organic and corresponding premium prices is vanishing or not developing in such a way that additional organic production capacity is needed. 

Organic climate farming also has the potential to open up new avenues for making organic more viable and sustainable. Among others, this includes reducing the increasing risks for farming imposed by a changing climate. 

For us, it is key to explore practical approaches that farmers may apply to not only make their farming operations more climate-proof, but also to identify novel business opportunities or at least opportunities to reduce operational costs. Climate farming should not add another cost to their bill by increasing their workload.

Knowledge and its exchange among peers–rather than just transfer from science–is a key feature of our project. We have several lighthouse farmers in the network that are pioneering organic climate farming very successfully. Other farmers can benefit from these experiences and even experience them “live” in exchange visits. Seeing such proof of concept can indeed be very encouraging to follow such great examples.

Know-how is a key ingredient to success. It is, in fact, the only thing we can offer to farmers in our network, and it has attracted a lot of interest. It can be a very encouraging incentive in the long run if you can improve your practices, create innovation that is even worth money by reducing risks, securing yields and income or even by opening up new marketing options for climate services like the sequestration of carbon in soils or perennials. 

This does not mean that other policy instruments, especially those that we find under the EU's Common Agriculture Policy, don’t matter. Some of the support for farmers is, in fact, also provided through capacity building or for organic or climate-friendly practices. 

What is important to bear in mind, though, is that there are no silver bullets. Farmers and farm systems can be quite different, and what works for a sheep farm in Ireland may not work for the same system in Latvia or even a horticulture system in the same country. In the choice of instruments, we also need to pay close attention that we do not create perverse incentives or situations of injustice. This is, in fact, a risk that has recently been revealed when it comes to a possible future carbon market for removals on farms. Such schemes may instead benefit those farmers who have been far from sustainable in the past, with depleted soil carbon or having removed all trees or hedges. 

This is indeed a challenge that many of our country partners have highlighted, which causes them to hesitate when it comes to doing more with regard to climate change, which is the focus of our project. 

There is an indirect link to the problem of fair prices in our project when investigating, for instance, possible rewarding schemes that allow compensating the multiple benefits (incl. climate mitigation and adaptation) that organic provides. 

One open question is whether these societal functions should be borne financially by organic buyers alone, since all of society benefits from the provision of cleaner water, air or the conservation of biodiversity. This raises serious ethical questions regarding responsibilities. 

One option could be to develop specific markets for those additional services, like carbon or other ecosystem services (so-called “nature credits”). One may at the same time also question whether existing compensatory or incentivising measures like the voluntary eco-schemes or agri-environment-climate measures under CAP–and support for organic under both pillars–are sufficiently developed to address the problem. 

We plan to publish a report soon in close collaboration with the sister project Climate Farm Demo on different types of rewarding schemes that could encourage farmers to progress with climate-smart practices. 

Actually, this is really what OrganicClimateNet is about. OrganicClimateNET will, over the coming years, help establish a pilot network of 250 organic farms–including some lighthouse farms–and provide the basis and important lessons learnt for the uptake of climate farming for a carbon-neutral, climate-resilient Europe. 

In the project, we will adapt, test, improve and implement climate and carbon farming practices through peer-to-peer learning and knowledge exchange in 24 hubs in 12 EU countries.

Our farmers are established organic producers, and there is no “before” baseline to measure the success of going organic against. 

With our focus being on climate-sensitive practices for organic farmers, of course, there is the expectation that also the pilot farms in our project OrganicClimateNet can do better and develop strategies, acquire relevant knowledge as well as important peer exchange and professional advice for becoming lighthouses of organic climate farming. 

So far, the project has helped establish 24 peer networks (so-called hubs) in our 12 partner countries, and we are currently piloting a training on carbon assessment tools for advisors that will be the basis for developing farm-specific climate strategies for all our 250 farms in the network. Also, some of our farmers will soon enjoy an exchange visit to Finland to learn about piloting practices and engage in peer-to-peer exchange. 

Disclaimer
OrganicClimateNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 101136880 and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the OrganicClimateNET’s project only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The MAIA project is also funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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