AN TAISCE

Contact: Mide Gerrard

"BACKING INTO THE FUTURE" By Tony Lowes, 8th Annual Conference on the Environment, Navan, County Meath, 26 November, 1998

INTRODUCTION

It should be clear that ambiguity clothes the exact meaning of "sustainable agriculture" and "sustainable forestry". We are, in fact, as my quotation from Ludwig Wittgenstein is intended to highlight, in somewhat of a quandary as to where to go to find this animal - where it was born, how it grew, and what it will become in a time beyond ours.

We know what it does not mean. Sustainable agriculture does not mean intensive beef production that results in a product which costs us twice the world's market price to produce. It does not mean agricultural production methods that lead to rapid and deadly fish kills or the slow but equally fatal eutrophication of our rivers and lakes. It does not mean mountains stripped of their protective clothing of vegetation by headage payments for sheep - or mountains afforested with non-native conifers that do not support the farmer and his community.

And herein lies a danger into which we may have fallen - to identify the excesses of modern agriculture and presume that in minimising and mitigating these effects we are practising sustainable agriculture. We are not. We are like the man fighting a fire as he backs away from the flames - we have our backs to the future as we deal with the excesses of the past.

What I would like to do today is to look at the history and nature of the agricultural sector as it has evolved - "restructured" - in itself and as it is being shaped by outside pressures - particularly the recent Uruguay round of GATT [General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs] agreements and the "Santer" Agenda 2000 proposal for the next round of GATT. I am not at all sure that our farming community and its leaders have really accepted the implications of these commitments.

Then I will try and examine the development of environmental concerns - which are much more recent in our community's history.

Thus armed, I hope to turn our backs to the fire that unsustainable agriculture has ignited and fueled and instead look into the future, identifying the trends - worldwide trends - and elements in present policy and research that have the welfare of our farming communities and the countryside itself at its heart - truly sustainable agriculture.

THE NATURE OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

In a sense, we are combining two separate animals when we speak of sustainable agriculture. We can even use the hybrid word that has evolved - agri-environmental⁵. But we must understand that these two animals come from very different lineages, and that the oldest by far is agriculture.

We have come a long way from the most primitive forms of agriculture harvests which must have been the cropping of that which grew in the world our first ancestors inhabited. Hunters and gatherers, they took no more than they found as they ranged an unexploited - and undeveloped - wilderness. When the nomadic existence came to a close, the continual use of land as a source of sustenance became agriculture as we know it now.

However one argues the case, the production of food always was and always will be a basic concern. Ireland has been inhabited by man for 9,000 years and been shaped by agriculture for 4,000 years. The scene of our study was set by the end of World War II, when a ravaged Europe looked on food production as integral to national security.

Agriculture has traditionally been the largest and most important sector in the Irish economy - though this is challenged now by tourism. But agriculture remains distinct in many ways from other sectors, in part because even our urban base is largely agrarian in family ties or loyalties and in part because of the close inter-relationship of the work place and the home with all the economic implications.

But agriculture is a sector and as Professor Frank Convery, the previous Chairman of An Taisce, was wont to say, "sectorialism is the enemy of environmentalism."

Listen to Nicholas Mansergh discussing the effect of sector driven development⁶. He is speaking of the 1996 Cork Development Plan and the tourism sector, but falls back as we shall see on agriculture for his example:

"[This sector] involves relatively high physical volumes of production, coupled with low diversity. In other words, one or two types of product are dominant, while other types of production either play a minor role, or are actively crowded out by the dominant ones. The dominate products result in excess demand for the particular environmental resources they use most heavily. They also create an attitude of mind in which economic progress consists in volume increases, rather than in diversification and gaining more per unit of production. In these circumstances, environment versus development conflicts are likely to be particularly acute. Market processes and public policy have a tendency to combine to promote high volume, low diversity patterns of production.

These tendencies are not specific to construction and tourism, but are a natural result of the sectoral promotion policies which governments apply in most sectors of economy.

" Perhaps the best known Irish example of a volume oriented incentive having environmentally damaging effects is in the overgrazing of hill areas as a result of the headage payments system. Sheep headage payments and premia have pushed the national flock from 4 million head of sheep in the early 1980's to 8.4 million head in 1995. At the same time, the national beef cow herd doubled to reach over one million head.⁷

"Any attempt to devise sectoral promotion policies exclusively at national or EU level risks this type of result," Mansergh continues, "because it involves applying standard policies to varying local areas. In these circumstances, a poor match between the standard policy and local conditions at least some of the time is almost inevitable, particularly if the desired response is a quite complex one, involving a balance between different types of economic activity or a need for them to complement each other. Where the match is poor, the result will be a volume of production and environmental impact which is disproportionately large relative to the benefits gained. In this way, sectoral promotion policies are liable to help bring local economic activity into conflict with environmental capacity constraints."

As Nicholas Mansergh suggested, this single minded emphasis on increased production is a result of the nature of any sectoral driven policy. However, two further factors - perhaps unique to agriculture - ensure that change has been slow to come.

The first is that the control and formulation of agricultural policy is as archaic (and male dominated) as any European institutions. As David Baldock and Philip Lowe put it in their seminal study of the development of European Agri-Environmental Policy⁸ :

"Indeed, the closed nature of national and European agricultural policy communities, which typically exclude from the decision making organizations not directly involved in implementing policy, and the complex and interlocking dependencies between state agencies and agriculture organizations makes for structures which are highly resistant to change, but also which seldom generate reform from within (Hervieu and Lagrave, 1992). Major change tends to arise from external pressures, particularly under conditions of crisis in which the management of the agricultural sector can no longer contain the problems it generates, thus politicizing policy making (Lowe, Marsden, and Whatmore, 1994). In this case, the conditions of crisis arose when European agriculture's efforts to cope with its own structural overproduction spilled over into budgetary crises and international trade conflicts, brought to a head by GATT negotiations. This undoubtedly created the opportunities for significant changes to agricultural Policy, including the development of agri-environmental policy."

The second factor slowing the restructuring of agriculture and the development of a sustainable agenda is the sheer power of the industry's voice. The Irish Farmer's Association has 925 Branches throughout the country and runs 22 National Committees. Their membership has actually increased by 12,000 in the last six years to 85,000 in spite of the shrinking size of the sector. It is unlikely that the entire environmental movement in Ireland could muster 12,000 paying members.

Half of the IFA funding comes from its members and the remainder from a 0.1% levy on all agricultural products for a "European Involvement Fund". With this latter IR£ 2 million the IFA monitored and influenced the IR£ 1.5 billion Ireland received from the EU Farm fund last year. In pursing this they undertook more than 250 European delegation journeys as well as maintaining a permanent office in Brussels.

I would suggest that almost every pound of this money was apparently spent in trying to prevent the inevitable restructuring of Irish agriculture and that virtually no funds were apparently devoted to the identification and development of forms of agriculture that would be more sustainable.

THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

However powerful the forces of inertia may be within the sector, greater forces will shape its destiny. In writing of the development of agriculture, Patrick Commins of the Teagasc Rural Economy Research Center suggests: "We may identify two broad time phases in the restructuring process. In the 1950s to the mid-1980s, there was a 'productivist' phase when the emphasis was on technical development, modernization of farming structures, and the expansion of output stimulated by relatively high commodity price supports."⁹

For us, 1973 marks the beginning of the European Union and with it the free trade within Europe. The same policies which had developed from a post-war Europe badly in need of all the production it could muster led to over production (the "productivist" phrase). This was fuelled both by the new free trade within Europe and an attempt to maintain EC export markets even though production was priced out of world markets.

Commins identifies the mid 1980's as the beginning of the "post productivist phase", characterized by the "stabilization or reduction of output and the development of low intensity and sustainable farming practices."¹⁰

The first of the post-productivist measures was in fact purely a measure to deal with agricultural over production within the European Community. It was devised by the Germans, who felt they were bearing an unreasonable financial burden and was EU Regulation 7987/85 - known to us as "set-aside". The removal of agricultural land from production may be an effective way of dealing with over production in agriculture. But it does not take very much thought to realize that in itself it is unlikely to contribute to sustainable agriculture - and in fact may through the use of chemical controls be worse environmentally than the previous agricultural rotation. And it does nothing to increase, let alone maintain, soil fertility or social well being.

In fact the European environmental agenda began with the 1987 Single European Act and EU Regulation 1760/87. This regulation recognised Environmentally Sensitive Areas and introduced a 25% reimbursement from EAGGF (European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund.) While Article 1a confirmed 1985's 20% set aside of arable land, article 1b provided for payment for the extensification of production that resulted in a 20% reduction in output.

Ultimately perhaps most important of all, 1760/87 formally required the Agricultural Council to re-examine these schemes within three years. The result were proposals in 1990 for "reinforcing the relationship between agriculture and the environment." This became the core of the new hybrid "agri-environmental" regulations and EU Regulation 2092/91 which first recognised organic produce as a specialised class of production.

Baldock and Lowe, in their study of The Development of European Agri-Environmental Policy make it clear that it would be wrong to see these first European environmental policy initiatives as "the triumph of environmental interests alone. Instead, environmental arguments have coincided with other powerful arguments for reform and together these have induced notable changes. The chronic funding problems of the EC, the strain placed on the already over stretched budgets, accession of Southern European states, the mounting costs and public scandal of burgeoning agricultural surpluses, and rising international opposition to the dumping of surpluses on world markets, have demanded consideration of means of curbing over production and the public costs of farming supports. Thus some agricultural policy makers have responded to environmental concerns, not necessarily through any deep convictions, but because of a perceived coincidence between the aims of environmental improvement and the need to reduce agricultural output, thereby contributing to the alleviation of surplus and budgetary problems. At the same time, in Northern Europe farming leaders in a context of chronic oversupply of staple products and falling farm incomes, have begun to look to the provision by farmers of 'environmental products' in order to underpin or renew their claims for public support."¹¹

The first objectives of the CAP 1992 reforms thus became:

"Sufficient number of farmers must be kept on the land. There is no other way to preserve the natural environment, traditional landscapes and a model of agriculture based on the family farm as favored by society generally." ¹²

Under CAP 1 (McSharry) the annual aggregate amount of direct payments doubled (to IR£ 911 million) between 1992 and 1996. They also doubled as a percentage of the aggregate farm income to 43.6% ¹³. McSharry was intended to reduce the inequitable distribution of transfers, generally referred to as the 80/20 split whereby 80% of the payment were received by 20% of the producers. Because payments were still tied to quantities - headage numbers or acreage - and because some schemes have no upper limit - the problem persists and may even have worsened.

I would suggest that two major factors are inevitably bringing to an end this "post productivist" period. The first is the expansion of the European Union which inevitably will change Ireland's position from that of disadvantaged while at the same time encouraging cheaper agricultural imports.

But the greatest factor of all was Ireland's commitments made in the 1994 Uruguay GATT agreements. To add to the confusion of nomenclature, the Uruguay GATT round was actually signed in Marrakesh in North Africa and is sometimes referred to by that name. Uruguay - or Marrakesh - was the 7th round of the GATT agreements that began in the 1940's. The agreements are founded firmly on the concept of free trade and the utterance of Adam Smith.

"What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage. The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished... but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage." ¹⁴

Even the power of free trade, however, met strong resistance from agriculture in Europe. Until 1994 agricultural products had not been included in GATT agreements. Under pressure from under developed countries that could not afford export subsidies - and from non-EU countries resentful of EU trade barriers - for the first time, agricultural products were included in the binding terms. Between 1 January, 1995 and 1 January, 2001, agricultural tariffs must be reduced by an average of 36% in developed countries.

So on 16 July 1997, CAP 2 came to us under the "Santer package". Santer proposed a 20% reduction in intervention prices for cereal from 2000 onwards. For the beef sector, the Commission proposed a reduction of 30% in support prices over the period 2000 - 2002. The Santer proposals are the European Union's negotiating position for the next round of GATT - above and beyond what was agreed at Marrakesh in 1994. Export subsides down overall by 36%. Domestic support down by 21%. As J. P. Frawley of Teagasc's Rural Economy Research center noted: "If the progress towards free trade for agricultural commodities continues the logical outcome is a gradual dismantling of long established and substantial support systems for farming in many parts of the world."¹⁵

How sustainable is the present agricultural structure when the inexorable reductions in subsidies that I have highlighted come to pass? Direct payments accounted for 62% of the average national income from farming in 1996. In cattle and sheep systems, direct payments averaged 100% of income.¹⁶

Approximately 40% of all farms have an income from farming of less than £5000. Over half of these farmers had off farm jobs. (Ironically, studies note that off-farm income leads to "own resource" investment in farming, showing that even within farms now there is a growing "transfer" that is underpinning what viability is left - 96% of sheep farmer's investment came from their own resources in County Mayo.¹⁷ The downside of this acceptance of part time farming will be a rigidity that does not favor the necessary restructuring for truly sustainable farming.¹⁸

Only about 6% of the farmers interviewed in the County Mayo study suggested their farms would be viable on farm income alone while 75% felt that an off farm job would secure the future of their farms.

The recently published National Farm Survey gives the following overview of the 1997 farming year: "Earlier projections which indicated that 1997 would be a difficult year for farm finances have proved well founded. The greatest problem was in the fall of prices, almost across the board. Prices for the two major sections, dairy and cattle fell by 7% and 5% respectively, but lamb prices recovered from the low levels of 1996. Cereal products were hit by lower prices and a particularly difficult harvest. At national level, these were not compensated for by a rise in the volume of output, which remained virtually static."¹⁹

And

"The average income per farm in many sub-groups is below the agricultural wage rate, which means that those farm families do not receive any return on either their labour or investment."²⁰

Reliance on transfers - the cheque in the post - has increased from 1993's 27% to 1996's 59%²¹. And the concept that the farming community needs less income because it lives in another world where there is always a jug of still frothy fresh milk on the table and a basket of freshly collected eggs on the dresser is not sustained by an examination of the expenditure of these families compared to their urban counterpart. Washing machines are as commonly held in our rural households as they are in urban ones; even microwaves are almost as common in the country as they are in urban households. Fridges are to be found in every house in the country. Televisions flicker equally in rural and urban dwellings.²²

These are the homes that are unsustainable if subsidies should fall. Frawley's interviews suggest that should proposed reductions in support take place, 40% of those engaged in farming would leave the sector.

GROWTH OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL "SECTOR"

Three elements underpinned the growth of the environmental agenda in Europe. First, as farming in marginal areas became more problematical through the 1970's and 1980's, so society grew uneasy with what the French call "desertification" - the abandonment of farms and decline in the management of the countryside.

A second debate emerged about the damage caused to the environment by farming practices. The first work to draw the public's attention to the frightening possibilities was Rachel Carson's 1960's book Silent Springs, detailing the damage that insecticides and artificial fertilizers were doing to our water. We have experienced this in Ireland in the form of eutrophication, the over enrichment of waters which causes algae blooms and can starve fish of the oxygen they need, threatening even rare species of genetically distinct fish, the heart of biodiversity. The latest of these books traces mutant fish to estrogen in our rivers from birth control pills.

The third element in the environmental awareness was the visible effects of drainage programs and reclamation programs on the ever dwindling supply of native habitats. Intensive agriculture began to be seen as having destructive effects on wildlife and the landscape.

The studies about to be published by the Heritage Council on The Impact of Agricultural Schemes and Payments on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage and The Impact of Forestry Policy on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage shows how sensitized we have become to the vulnerable nature of our environment. One current Heritage Council project under the Community Grants Scheme 1997 involves the growing and harvesting of rye on the Aran Islands to maintain a vanishing cultural and visual pattern from our farming heritage.²³

In an important sense, environmental awareness has returned the interest of our society to the nature of our farms and is largely responsible for gatherings like this addressing the subject. In recent years this trend has been strengthened by an urban population that is increasingly willing - and able - to pay for the maintenance of countryside it has left behind.

While studies in Europe are sparse in this field, detailed American surveys²⁴ have costed this "existence value". In values of US Dollars for the year 1990 by household, the value of endangered species is $17, though the bald eagle is rated at $40. While recreational forests are given a value of $62, the value of "wilderness" tops the survey at up to $106 per household per year.

Interestingly enough, excluded from the Uruguay Round of reduction agreements are "Green Box" policies. These are measures that at most have a minimal impact on trade - research, disease control, infrastructure and food security. What we are seeing since CAP 1 has been an increasingly attempt to integrate environmental controls - to ensure that eligibility for direct payments is conditional on defined environmental provisions and to develop programs that protect this "environmental product". Known as "cross-compliance" in eurospeak, this concept is responsible for the current Framework Plans determining assessment of stocking rates on commonages, a measure which I would suggest was undertaken to satisfy Commission pressure.

But Green Box policies also include direct payments to producers - "de-coupled" from production income support - such as environmental programs and regional assistance programs. The rural environmental protection scheme [REPS] is probably the best known of these programs.

REPS appeals to the peripheral farmer with low income, offering approximately £5000 a year (maximum) to engage in a five year program of 11 environmental measures and 6 supplementary measures that range from removing the wrecked cars from the back yard (Measure 8: Maintain and Improve the visual appearance of farms and farmyards) to replanting hedgerows or rebuilding traditional stone walls (Measure 4: Maintain Farm and Field Boundaries). A REPS planner visits the farm and with the farmer draws up a management plan. Payment includes areas maintained for habitats.

Slow to be accepted in the pilot stage, REPS now accounts for more than 1 million hectares of land. Due to be extended for perhaps as long as 15 more years, REPS will not be subject to the cutback of transfers because it qualifies as an environmental measure rather than as a production support.

Of course there are problems with REPS. Education has been given a lower priority than implementation; there are questions about the qualifications of REPS Planners and Inspectors in the botanical and ecological expertise required to encourage biodiversity, in spite of (of perhaps because of) training in nutrient management measures; uneven enforcement of conditions; premature damage - especially loss of hedgerows²⁵ in some areas - lack of support for hardwoods and recognition of native "scrub" - and increased pressure on that 1% of agricultural land that comes up for sale every year to maintain stocking rates by purchasing more "marginal" land to satisfy paper stocking level requirements. Finally, no overall assessment of REPS has been undertaken or is planned to determine in what ways the measures are succeeding or failing in their intentions.

In some sense, REPS has become pitted against forestry - the one representing biodiversity, mixed environmental management as a primary concern - and the other the darker side of commercial farming, supported by tax breaks that are of no more value to the rural dweller than they are to the PAYE worker in the cities.

To quote from the Agenda 2000 proposals, "the concept of public payment for the protection of the natural resource and the enhancement of the countryside is increasingly gaining acceptance and offers agriculture and forestry, as the main land user, both new challenges and fresh opportunities."²⁶

THE FORESTRY INITIATIVE

Interestingly enough, the Commission attempted to broach the traditional fortifications of the agricultural sector most clearly in forestry. EU Regulation 2080/92 is a mechanism for the grant aiding of forests. It recognizes in its preamble that afforestation is mechanism by which agricultural land can be removed from production - in eurospeak "improving efficiency of agricultural structures". It was specifically intended to "contribute towards forms of countryside management more compatible with environmental balance."²⁷

Noting that "fast growing species cultivated on the basis of a short felling cycle is generally profitable", 2080/92 goes on to specifically forbid the grant aiding of these species unless planted by farmers themselves. Grant aid for the planting of hardwoods was encouraged for both private persons and public authorities. But the fast growing species - the conifers, specifically sitka spruce and lodgepole pine - were only to be funded for farmers practicing farming as their main occupation. They must draw more than 25% of their income from farming (or farm based tourism or craft activities) and spend more than 50% of their time on farming and farm based activities.²⁸

In fact, 2080/92 was used instead to fund Coillte and private business concerns on a planting program so that by the time the government's policy was published in 1996 Coillte had collected between IR£ 4.3 million and IR£ 8.5 million a year in afforestation grants with premia - intended to replace lost income for the farmer - totaling a further IR£ 3 million.

In fact, funding to date under 2080/92 to Coillte for fast growing species reached a total of IR£ 30.9 million with a further IR£ 13.8 million awarded to "non-farmers".²⁹ Finally, the definition of farmers used by the Department in its grant assessments is far wider than that permitted under the relevant European Regulation.

Ireland's end run around 2080/92 came under another form of scrutiny when the Commission came to examine the results across Europe of the regulation's first four years 1992-1996.³⁰

Ireland planted conifers at a rate of 80%. The next highest planting rate was France, with 48%, and the European average was 27% for conifers. With the kind of grant money available, however, and the creation of a semi-state body to specifically garner the profits of our national resources - surely a child of the Thatcher era - a horizontal example of sectorialism at its worst was born.

The 1996 Forestry Policy was itself not a vision of the future but a justification of the misconstruction of the grant system. The 1996 Forestry Policy prescribes 20,000 hectares a year of the land mass going under conifers until we reached a "critical mass" - from 8% to 15% of the country's land mass. The Plan was fuelled by the private investment sector where pension funds and insurance companies were attracted by the grants and the generous tax breaks.

Thus we have a seamless hegemony composed of the agricultural interests (farmers cooperatives are actually eligible under 2080/92, provided their members are farmers by the European definition), business interests, the universities, and the government - all engaged in the pursuit of profit at the expense of the farmers the grant mechanism was intended to favor. This hegemony and concentration on fast growing species manifests itself in the grant structure. Hardwoods are not to be granted on unenclosed lands, thus consigning our mountainous lands to conifers. In its newest grant proposals, Coillte offers the farmer an up front advance of IR£ 500 on the long-term profits - but the provision is that the land to be utilized must be yield class 24. This is a designation of prime land of the highest quality that begs for hardwood plantations - and only fast growing conifers may be planted. While the Forest Service pays lip service to the planting of hardwoods at national level, at the current forestry seminars on forestry for farmers around the country run jointly by Teagasc and the Forest Service is saying to a man that only a farmer who needs no return for 100 years should consider planting hardwoods.

Questions are now being raised about this form of forestry on various grounds. The first refers back to what I mentioned earlier today - the Department of the Environment's identification of the failure of the various sectors in Ireland to account for their costs - in this case acidification of surface water, the release of potentially toxic chemicals under specific geological conditions, siltation of rivers and lakes in preparing the ground for plantations and after clear felling, ill targeted helicopter spraying of phosphates, and the use of chemicals like Guardoprin which have been banned in England and elsewhere. An assessment of the value for public funds involved in a recent issue of the Irish Banking Review casts doubts on even the economic value of the present policy.³¹

Another concern is the failure of the authorities to lower the threshold levels for Environmental Impact Assessments to reflect the average plantation size and sensitivity of our landscape. While the average size of plantations in Ireland is less than ten hectares, the threshold is set at 70 hectares. This is the subject of an infringement complaint by the European Union. The complaint is - as always - being vigorously defended by our national authorities.

Finally, the Forest Indicative Strategy that each Local Authority has been asked to prepare have, with notable exceptions such as County Wicklow, been unsuccessful, mainly because no resources were provided at a time when planning applications have been increasing greatly and staff recruitment is subject to stringent controls. Damage to our landscape buy forestry is being highlighted by a current environmental campaign.³²

The greatest worry for the sustainability of this sector is the market itself. The same conditions which guarantee timber growth rates as high as three times that of our Scandinavian competitors also ensures that we will produce the worst quality timber. In the draft of the Heritage Council's report on the Impact of Current Forestry Policy on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage, this vulnerability to technical and commercial factors is identified as a major weakness with the current dominance of sitka spruce. It may well be that rising energy costs have already made problematic the profitable harvest of some of Ireland's coniferous forestry.

The growth of timber certification as a method of consumer control is also occupying the minds of our forestry industry. The Heritage Council's report³³ notes that in the UK the UK 95 + Buyers Group of retailers and manufacturers representing 40% of the UK timber market - including even composite boards - are committed to FSC certification and this particular movement is still in its infancy. FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification - is the demand of the Irish NGOs while it is seen by many forest managers and owners as an unnecessary constraint. These interests are unhappy at relinquishing power to NGO dominated organizations. They argue for Government standards and industry backed auditing.

We will come across certification again in a moment in terms of agricultural sustainability. As long as the central issue is consumer confidence both agricultural products and timber must have standards that are internationally acceptable to the environmental community, not least to be able to able to protect the industry from the more radical environmentalists. And all certification requires cooperation, as forest certification is valueless if the processors do not have the chain of custody certificates.

Finally, Ireland's forestry policy has simply not produced the form of employment that would contribute to the first goal of European agricultural policy - to support employment by the farmer on his farm and so sustain our communities and countryside. The capital required for harvesting ensures that farmers must engage specialist contractors. Land that young farmers require to comply with other European subsidies is greatly inflated in value. Marginal employment on farms is in fact reduced by this form of forestry policy, although a certain number of jobs are of course created for the contractors and in often distant factories that have been tempted here by substantial IDA grants and the prospect of a long and rich life.

SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY?

Can we look into the future with forestry and identify elements that are sustainable alternatives - or at least complementary - to our current forestry program? Systems like CCFG - the Continuous Cover Forest Group - promote un-even age forest stands that enable an area to maintain continuous forest cover. CCFG offers a continuous flow of employment but it also supports environmental concerns. Different sized forests with different species mixes are managed so that the future flow of income can be derived from different sources in the forest.

Pro-Silva is a similar approach which seeks to mimic natural ecosystems, reducing ecological and economic risks. Selective harvesting is eventually accompanied by natural regeneration.

While systems like these require long lead times, different elements can be supported by different grants.

A particular example derives from the renewable Energy Strategy announced by the Department of Transport, Energy, and Communications in April of 1996. This includes a target of 7 MW of electricity to be generated by the end of 1999 by bio-mass or waste.

If Ireland took this obligation seriously and established a biomass generating power station based on short rotation coppicing of woodlands planning should have begun by now. The established biomass species - Willow and Poplar - have completed their research phases.³⁴ If a location for this plant was determined, planting should begin at least six years in advance of the date of the opening of the unit to ensure a supply of fuel. We have heard no such announcement.

Yet in Yorkshire's Project Arbre, this form of renewable energy has drawn down locational supplements in addition to the normal woodland grants to ensure that farmers in Yorkshire and three other counties will establish short rotation coppice. The grant is available to farmers within 40 miles of the plant. It and covers the time period from August 1998 to March 2001 with an annual budget of UK£ 1 million a year.

The project has spin off benefits aside from establishing an adequate fuel reserve in the area. It will be a means of demonstrating best practice in short rotation coppicing and will stimulate reductions in planting costs through the wider availability of specialized expertise, equipment, and materials. Coppice is, further, an acceptable source of pulp for some if not all of our board mills, giving an immediate market in other regions of the country.³⁵ Farmers are more amenable to crops like coppice which have relatively short returns compared to conifers or hardwoods grown to maturity.

The package or envelope of grants that are available from the European Union should be reexamined in the light of our knowledge of the costs of the present policy in terms of biodiversity and this should be planned with regional and local biodiversity in mind to ensure that parts of the country do not become overcome with single species plantations of any kind. Perhaps 20% of our coniferous plantations have been carried out on land that has proved unsuitable. While it may not be possible to restore these areas to their previous native state - indeed the current felling licenses require replanting - reforestation with species such as birch should qualify for community funding. This would give us up to 80,000 hectares of native woodlands and turn a failure into a dramatic success. Woodland restoration grants and amenity grants have languished unused in the coffers of the Commission because Ireland has not taken up these grants. Coppice, thinning of timber like birch for finger jointing, use of oak thinning, import substitution for floor boards - these alternatives remain almost undeveloped here in Ireland.

Look at some of the research done by COFORD :³⁶

Survey of the market potential for small scale applications of short rotation forestry for energy in Ireland³⁷

Fertilisation and nutrient cycling in short rotation willow coppicing
Investigation of growth and yield of poplar clones
Determination of nutrient requirements of various foliage species
Market Opportunities for Irish Grown Poplar Wood

Without labouring the point, it is difficult at this stage to feel that the movement towards sustainable practices in land use - as opposed to the avoidance of the unsustainable - needs not more research but active encouragement that to date remains misplaced.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE?

Let us - finally - examine exactly what sustainable means in terms of our farming practices. The word has deep roots in the Latin, sustinere, to keep in existence, and implies permanence or long-term support. As it pertains to 'agriculture', 'sustainable' describes farming systems that are "capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely. Such systems...must be resource-conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive, and environmentally sound."³⁸

In the words of the Cork Declaration, sustainable agricultural systems
Should be highly productive, of safe, high quality products
Physically sustainable Biologically sustainable
Satisfy agreed criterion for humans and animal welfare
Not give rise to unacceptable pollution, by products or effects (including visual)
Must be profitable
Again: satisfy human food and fibre needs
enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends.

C) make the most efficient use of non-renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls;
D) sustain the economic viability of farm operations;
E) enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.

"Sustainable agriculture is a philosophy based on human goals and on understanding the long-term impact of our activities on the environment and on other species. The use of this philosophy guides our application of prior experience and the latest scientific advances to create integrated, resource-conserving, equitable farming systems. These systems reduce environmental degradation, maintain agricultural productivity, promote economic viability in both the short and long term, and maintain stable rural communities and quality of life."³⁹

Fine words butter no parsnips. Specifically these are the techniques that form part of the practitioners answer to artificial fertilisers and chemical controls:

1) Crop rotations mitigate weeds, avoid build ups of disease and pests; provide alternative sources of nitrogen; reduce soil erosion, and reduce the risk of water contamination by agricultural chemicals

2) Pest control strategies including timing of plantings, use of resistant cultivars, and biological pest controls

3) Biological and mechanical weed controls, soil and water conservation practices, use of green and animal manures

These are specific and positive practices in their own which are intended to bring positive rewards in terms of health and development. The are not fire fighting measures to deal with a rapidly deteriorating environment, though of course these practices will do that too and in fairness some of them - crop rotation - are already used.

More words associated with sustainable agriculture:

Agroecology, alternative, biodynamic⁴⁰, biological, biotecnology⁴¹, integrated pest management, Kyusei nature farming⁴², low imput farming, low intensity farming, organic farming, organoculture⁴³, permaculture⁴⁴, regenerative agriculture⁴⁵.

Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry in fact dates from 1580 and has been in print in every century since. Tusser set crop rotation to rhyme:

"Where barlie did growe,
aie wheat to sowe,
yet better I thinke,
sowe pease, after drinke.
And then if ye please,
sowe wheat after pease."

Consider then the long history of the growth of sustainable agriculture:
1788: Adam Dickson quotes Columella, Palladius, Cato, Virgil, Pliny, et. al., regarding the knowledge and practice of husbandry, and confesses in the preface to be "agreeably surprised to find, that, notwithstanding the great differences in climate, the maxims of the ancient Roman farmers are the same with those of the best modern farmers in Britain..."

Green Manuring and Manures was the title of an 1864 United States Government publication. We find Charles Darwin in 1881 writing of The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits. The author of the 1907 The Clifton Park System of Farming and Laving Down Land to Grass commented that proposals to agricultural changes are often met with a response characterized as "What we knows we knows, and what we don't know we don't want to know."

The Rape of the Earth: a World Survey of Soil Erosion by Jack and White was a 1939 pioneering classic, while Sir Albert Howard's book of the same year (the "father of the movement") was entitled An Agricultural Testament. The Rodale's, father and son, began as early as 1946 with Pay Dirt: Farming and Gardening with Composts. Titles like Organic Agriculture: Economic and Ecological Comparisons with Conventional Methods abound by the 1980s.

In his 1985 The Natural Way of Farming: the Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy and The One Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka reiterates his five major principles: no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, and no pruning. His book deals almost exclusively with farming in Japan, but his message can be viewed from a universal perspective.

Yet Teagasc would suggest only this summer that "Until the environmental performance of a variety of agricultural systems is better understood, judgements about whether specific systems are "sustainable" or not will be based on conjecture rather than fact. Neither corrective measures at farm level nor public policy can be formulated on a rational basis without further research being conducted in this area."⁴⁶

Indeed, Teagasc has a substantial Rural Environmental Research Programme⁴⁷ just as we saw COFORD has an admirable record of research and studies⁴⁸. Total staff is 1,655 plus the funding of 121 staff in private colleges⁴⁹. I am not entirely convinced, however, that sustainable agriculture and forestry must await the results of yet more research, and would fear that Ireland's comparative advantage is in fact being eroded as our European neighbor's move in to supply the changing market.

No where is this more true than in organic agriculture, which largely without state funding began an explosive growth in Europe that has not been matched here in Ireland, where our natural comparative advantages in terms of a clean image and - relatively - unspoiled natural environment should have left us well placed for the race.

Here are three charts that show the European growth rate of organic farming. The number of farms has grown from less than 10,000 in 1987 to 80,000 in 1997. The land area from 10,000 hectares to very nearly 2 million hectares. And the output has grown from less than 1 % to almost 10% through explosive growth in countries like Sweden and Austria.

Ireland's figures are relatively insignificant. We had only 2,400 hectares in 1994 rising to 3,300 in 1996. What is interesting is the rise in areas under transition conversion to organic farming from 2,900 in 1994 to 14,700 in 1996 - largely a result of the "top up" payments under REPS for transition to organic farming.

Under supplementary Measure 6 of REPS 10,800 hectares qualified for organic transition payments in 1998. If we accept that today in Ireland there are 850 holdings consisting of 26,000 hectares of organic production, we would be equivalent of Austria in 1992.

Austria, meanwhile, has at this stage of its development of organic farming identified infrastructure as its main problem, particularly in milk and meat products. When these matters are addressed, it is difficult to see how the growth in this sector, supported increasingly by an aware public and eager supermarkets, will not continue to prosper.

In Ireland, the OPA/RDF scheme intended to assist this promising market sector failed to be implemented through administrative difficulties, although I understand this is being addressed by all parties concerned virtually as we speak. Even difficulties in adopting an agreed symbol across Europe for organic goods is a stumbling block to these development, and just as in forestry the determination of agreed standards of certification is vital, difficult to achieve, and liable to be accused of creating a trade barrier itself.

It is worth looking at the arguments against certification in some detail, because I do not believe they stand up to careful examination. In a 1996 letter written by the U.S. National Food Processors Association and large trade organizations to the U.S. Government the gauntlet is laid down: "Eco-seals do not improve the environment, but inherently impede innovation, restrict international trade and interfere with the consumer's right to choose" products on "the basis of factual information about their environmental characteristics". Organic food labeling "train consumers only to look for a simple symbol" which says "good for you" rendering consumers' choices uneducated. Thus "informed consumer choice" is "threatened by the spread of eco-seals throughout the world"⁵⁰

But the truth of the matter is that the consumer is buying organic produce so that he contributes as little a possible to the contamination of the soils, the air and the waters by evaporation, drift and leakage of agrochemicals. He buys these products because he believes that they have not been subjected to damage-prone processing with irradiation or by genetically engineered micro-organisms with genes from other species.

The consumer is able to exercise his own leverage⁵¹ through the market place and thus contribute to a sustainable use of natural resources while at the same time eating what he believes is a healthier diet. His conscience and stomach march as one.

Finally, the opponents of certification claim "Eco-seals are easily abused as a protectionist trade barriers and will result in numerous international trade disputes". It is "particularly difficult for products/packaging ... from developing countries to qualify for eco-seals".

In fact, organic certification is clearly dealt with in Article 11 of 2092/91 and requires only that less developed nations have effectiveness equivalency of standards. It does not require identical procedures. The Article makes it clear that each nation may develop its own organic food production and their own certification and that any EU member may recommend the listing of any certification scheme in any third country, based on an evaluation by a group of experts in the member state. Side by side with organic farming is the growth of "community supported agriculture", sometimes known as "subscription farming".⁵²

CSA originated in Switzerland and Japan in the 1960's and was introduced to the United States in the mid 1980's. Farmers looking for stable markets for their crops joined consumers interested in safe food in economic partnerships. In basic terms a community of individuals pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.

Typically, members - often known as shareholders, pledge in advance to cover the anticipated cost of the farm's operation and the farmer's salary. More people participate in the farming operation than on conventional farm, and some projects encourage members to work on the farm in exchange for a portion of their membership costs. Members share both the bounty and the risks; by direct sales to the members who have provided the farmer with the working capital in the first place, growers receive better prices, gain financial security, and are relived of the burden of marketing.

Robyn Van En, a leading CSA advocate, suggests that CSA's main goal is in fact to "develop participating farms to their highest ecological potential and to develop a network that will encourage and allow other farms to be involved".⁵³

Surely this is sustainable agriculture?

CONCLUSION

When I began I suggested that we would be wise to take heed of Wittgenstein's warning of looking in the wrong place to find the object of our search - or of allowing our preconceptions to hinder our investigations. In our farming sectors search for sustainability I would suggest they our leaders have been doing both.

Environmentally, of course there has been a substantial reduction in artificial fertilizers and the use of insecticides in the past few years, and it would be churlish not to be grateful for the very large effort that Teagasc and the Department have put into bringing this about.

Agriculture is no doubt more sustainable - or less unsustainable - than it would have been otherwise. But let us not forget Baldock and Lowe's observation that European environmental policies are largely the result of "coincidences". I have suggested that these approaches, as useful as they are, are really fire fighting measures, many of them taken on under pressure from the European Commission relating to Groundwater Directives or Dangerous Substances Directive.

Add to this the fact that all of the Irish sectors have difficulty in internalizing their costs. The Department of the Environment's Sustainable Development Strategy identifies Ireland's strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses include structural conflicts between environment and development objectives - we dealt with this earlier - and insufficient and inadequate internalization of environmental costs.⁵⁴

How much of the costs of cleaning up our water catchments should in fact be borne by the sectors that inflicted them - farming, tourism, even forestry? How much of what we believe are the profits from farming, as small as they are, should in fact not be seen as profits at all, because they are costing the local authority far greater sums in treating the water for a public supply or forming task forces and catchment teams to undo the damage we have done?

As if this was not serious enough in environmental terms alone, we have seen that if the agreements we have made in the area of free trade are honored, we are going to see a substantial fall in the subsides that current farming relies on as long as they are related to production of a marketable product. It is perhaps most disheartening of all to see that our farming organizations and indeed the entire sector does not appear to have been willing to face up to these implications, marching on Dublin and besieging Brussels as if we could find sustainability amongst the rags of the Brussels's kitty.

Organic production is still seen as a fringe activity; coppicing is associated with hand crafts and these are dismissed as irrelevant - though some of us suspect that studies now underway will show that these craft related activities are another area that may yet prove fruitful in the search for ways to keep our countryside alive by offering rather more employment than might at first appear.

I have suggested areas towards which we could look in both forestry and farming that are not as vulnerable in financial or environmental terms and I would be delighted to leave it at that, but I believe if you look carefully at what I have identified as the governing realities of trade today - Adam Smith and free trade - the canny listener may suspect that whatever solutions we have identified - bio-mass and coppicing, organic vegetables and natural meats - even crafts - may face the same obstacle when their production increases to the point where we come to sell to our products into our neighbor's markets - or when their surplus production finds its way across our borders.

Certainly these are not easy questions, but they are not assisted by the failure of our policy makers to address them. Even in the recent response to the Court of Auditors study of farming subsides ("£9000 a year average EU subsidy for Irish farmers"⁵⁵ ), the farming community response concentrated on suggesting that the subsidies could be rejigged to favor the small farmer.

Not only did McSharry's CAP 1 prove that such a hope is unrealistic, but it masks the underlying problem that we have been looking at today - farming grants as we know them face repeated staged reductions of 20% and 30% over the coming decade. Until our leaders accept the primacy of Adam Smith and devote our considerable resources and abilities towards the promotion of truly sustainable practices - many of which we have researched already - we will continue to lose many of our farmers from the land while at the same time inflicting on the environment unnecessary damage. It is time to stop backing into the future.

Footnotes

⁵"Eco" words also apply, resulting in compounds like the study of "agroecology"
⁶Capacity, Diversity, Resources and Controls, Nicholas Mansergh in Learning Sustainability by Doing, page 14, An Taisce, 1998.
⁷Impact of Agricultural Schemes and Payments on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage, Hickie, Smyth, Bohnsack, Scott and Baldock, The Heritage Council, June, 1998(DRAFT)
⁸The Development of European Agri-Environmental Policy, David Baldock and Philip Lowe, M. Whitby (ed.) The Environment and CAP Reform, CABI, 1996
⁹The Changing Structure of Irish Agriculture, Patrick Commins, in Learning Sustainability by Doing, page 45, An Taisce, 1998.
¹⁰Ibid, page 45
¹¹The Development of European Agri-Environmental Policy, ibid
¹²European Commission, 1991, pp 9-10, quoted in Baldock and Lowe
¹³The Changing Structure of Irish Agriculture, Patrick Commins, in Learning Sustainability by Doing
¹⁴The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, Book IV:2, Modern Library edition
¹⁵The Impact of Direct Payments at Farm Level, J.P. Frawley, Teagasc Rural Economy Research Centre, August 1998
¹⁶Direct payments can actually exceed income whenever market based output is not sufficient to cover costs
¹⁷Frawley, Table 5.10
¹⁸The National Farm Survey 1997 concludes its section on investment on a chilling note: "Whether if [increased investment] can be justified purely on economic criteria, or indeed if it is being made puirely for economic reasons, has not been saisfactorily resolved, and must remain open to question".
¹⁹National Farm Survey 1997, Heavey, Roche and Burke, October 1998; Teagasc
²⁰"Over 90% of labour units contributed to farms in 1995 were family labour and this figure varied little by system." The Impact of Direct Payments at Farm level, a county study, J.P. Frawley, Rural Economic Research Centre, August 1998
²¹Frawley, op. cit
²²Frawley, op. cit
²³Heritage Council, Annual Report, 1997
²⁴Non Wood Benefits in Forestry: A Survey of Valuation Studies, Soren Wibe, UN-ECE/FAO Timber and Forest Discussion Papers, UN FAO, 1995
²⁵Not unnaturally, the farmer is confused about the correct approach to hedgerow. 20 years ago he was being paid to rip them out. Now he is being paid to put them back and even leave them relatively untended. "Under the Scheme's measures to be taken by the farmer in order to qualify for REPS payments, the preservation and management of hedgerows comes under 2 headings namely: (iv) to retain wildlife habitats and (v) to maintain farm and field boundaries. In many instances it appears that the second measure, that of maintenance of farm and field boundaries undoes the first one, which is the retention of wildlife habitats. " REPS education, monitoring, reporting, Leni Hurley, Earthwatch, Oct. 1998, unpublished.
²⁶Frawley, J.P., The Impact of Direct Payments at Farm Level
²⁷Council Regulation (EC) 2080/92 instituting a Community aid scheme for forestry measures in agriculture
²⁸EU Regulations 2329/91, now 950/97
²⁹Parliamentary Questions 83 of 12/11/97, 130 & 131 of 2/12/97, 135 of 10/02/98, 90 & 91 of 25/03/98
³⁰Report from the EC to the Council and the European Parliament on the application of EEC Reg. No. 2080/92 instituting a community aid scheme for forestry measures in agriculture, COM97 630 Final.
³¹Irish Forstry Policy, A Cost Benefit Analysis, Peter Clinch, Irish Banking Review, Spring, 1998.
³²VOICE, reported in The Irish Times, 17 November 1998.
³³The impact of Current Forestry on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage, May, 1998(draft)
³⁴Dawson, Malcom (1995) 'Short-rotation coppice-a realistic source of renewable energy' in Jon Pilcher and Sean Mac an tSaoir, (eds), Wood, Trees and Forest in Ireland. Royal Irish Academy, Dublin pp. 105-15
³⁵Ironically, callows are ideal for short rotation coppice and there is a danger that indiscriminate plantations of a valuable alternative could in itself become a threat to this specialized environment.
³⁶Directory of Forest Research in Ireland, 1997/98, National Council for Forest Research and Development, (ed.) Hendrick and Lynch
³⁷Also: Dawson, Malcolm. (1995). 'Short-rotation coppice-a realistic source of renewable energy' in Jon Pilcher and Sean Mac an tSaoir, (eds), Wood, Trees and Forest in Ireland. Royal Irish Academy, Dublin pp. 105-15
³⁸John Ikerd, "Sustainability's Promise", Journal of Soil and Water Conservation(Jan.-Feb. 1990) 45(1) p. 4 NAL 56.8.J822
³⁹Francis and Youngberg
⁴⁰Dr. Rudolf Steiner's work emphasised the many forces within living nature
⁴¹"The issue is who will be served by this technology and who will set the research agenda of the experts becomes intensely important when so few people control the tools and languages of the trade." Hassebrook and Hegves, Alternative Directions in Biotechnology, Iowa State University 1989
⁴²Teruo Higa, developed in Japan and now gaining international attention on the Far East and South America. Natural and organic, it adds the element of inoculation micro-organisms into the soil to increase the microbiological diversity and so augmenting the health, growth, and yield of crops.
⁴³Rodale, Jerome Irving, The Organic Front, 1948
⁴⁴Unique in its attention to landscape and its emphasis on low maintenance integration of plants, animals, people and structures.
⁴⁵Robert Rodale and the Rodale Institute. Rodale emphasised that the enhanced regeneration of renewable resources is essential to the achievement of a sustainable form of agriculture. The Rodale Institute developed into the leading propenent and publisher in the explosive growth of organic gardening in the last two decades in America
⁴⁶Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment, Dr. John Lee, in Learning Sustainability by Doing An Taisce, 1998
⁴⁷Camelina, "a realistic alternative to fish oil", early varieties of lupin, hemp for fibre are all included in current research. (TeagascAnnual Report, 1997
⁴⁸Directory of Forest Research in Ireland 1997/1998, National Council for Forest Research & Development
⁴⁹Teagasc Annual Report, 1997
⁵⁰Organic Food Regulations and Industry Quality Standards, Hanspeter Schmidt Rechtsanwalt, BIOFAIR '96 Costa Rica and its Global Trade Forum for Certified Organic Products
⁵¹The concept of using consumer power to support environmentalists at great distance is powerful. "Fair Trade" products such as coffee can assist in ensuring positive social as well as environmental benefits.
⁵²Community Supported Agriculture, An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide, US Department of Agriculture
⁵³Community Supported Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture, May 1995
⁵⁴Department of the Environment, 1997, p.23-4, quoted in Manserg, op. cit.,
⁵⁵Examiner, 16 November, 1998

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, Blackwells, Oxford, 1972. ©1958 Basil Blackwell & Mott Ltd.
Learning Sustainability by doing - Regional Integration by the Social Partners, (ed.) Beanne Meldon, An Taisce, Urge, DGXI, and DOE, 1998
Capacity, Diversity, Resources, and Controls
Nicholas Mansergh, Dept. of Geography, UCC
Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment, Dr. John Lee, Teagasc
The Changing Structure of Irish Agriculture, Patrick Commins, Rural Economy Research Center, Teagasc
The Development of European Agri-Environmental Policy, David Baldock and Philip Lowe, in M. Whitby (ed.) The Environment and CAP Reform, CABI, 1996
Impact of Current Forestry Policy on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage, Environmental Resources Management, The Heritage Council, May, 1998 (DRAFT)
Impact of Agricultural Schemes and Payments on Aspects of Ireland's Heritage, Hickie, Smyth, Bohnsack, Scott and Baldock, The Heritage Council, June, 1998 (DRAFT)
National Farm Survey 1997, J. F. Heavey, M. Roche, and T. Burke, Teagasc, October, 1998
The Impact of Direct Payments at Farm Level - a county study, J.P. Frawley, Teagasc Rural Economy Research Center, August, 1998
Teagasc Annual Report & Financial Statements, 1997, Teagasc
Directory of Forest Research in Ireland, 1997/88, (ed.) Eugene Hendrick & Patricia Lynch. COFORD, National Council for Forest Research & Development, 3rd edition, 1998
Lough Derg & Lough Ree, Interim Report. Kirk Morton McClure, 1998
REPS education, monitoring, reporting, Leni Hurley, Earthwatch, Oct. 1998, unpublished.
Draft Indicative Forest Strategy, Wicklow County Council, April, 1997
Non Wood Benefits in Forestry: A Survey of Valuation Studies, Sören Wibe, UN-ECE/FAO Timber and Forest Discussion Papers, UN, 1995
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): An annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide, USA Department of Agriculture
The Nature of Farming, Low Intensity Farming Systems in Nine European Countries, Coordinated by David Baldock, Institute for European Environmental Policy, London, 1994
Organic Food Regulations and Industry Quality Standards: Guarantor of Truth or Trade Barriers in Environmental Food Marketing?, Hanpeter Schmidt Rechtsanwalt, Global Trade Forum for Certified Organic Products, BIOFAIR '96 Costa Rica

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