As a five-year countdown to the 25%-organic-by-2030 target begins, will 2025 bring the ‘game-changing’ policies leading organic advocates are calling for? Jim Manson reports.
2025 is a year of unavoidable symbolism for Europe’s organic food and farming industry, marking the beginning of a five-year countdown to the EU’s 25%-organic-by-2030 target.
The 25% organic target, part of the EU’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity initiatives (formally adopted in 2020), was considered highly ambitious from the outset, even within the organic community. But the view of many organic insiders was that aiming high offered the best prospects for a meaningful scaling of organic agriculture over what would be a crucial decade for the planet.
To date, progress towards meeting the 25% target has been variable, with member states moving at very different speeds. Some have seen sustained and aggressive lobbying from agri-business interests opposed to organic expansion plans, with the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine and disruption to supply chains used to support a narrative that the EU’s green transition threatens food security. However contorted an argument this is, it has almost certainly led to slippage of key Farm to Fork deadlines.
In November 2024, the European Environment Agency warned of the “now high certainty that the (25%) objective will not be met by 2030”. Two months earlier, the European Court of Auditors identified “persistent gaps and inconsistencies” in policy support. Meanwhile, analysis by the Thünen Institute suggests that organic’s share of total EU farmland in 2030 is likely to stand at around 15%, significantly short of the 25% target figure.
Organic sector mobilises
But instead of plunging the organic sector into a state of collective gloom, these warnings have galvanised the industry. Leading actors have mobilised to show how examples of best practice, policy support and market stimulus from organic front-runners – such as Denmark and Germany – can “be taken down from the shelf to drive rapid transition today”, as the prominent Danish commentator, Paul Holmbeck, has put it.
Holmbeck says that “the best policies come from when policy makers work in close dialogue and collaboration with the organic sector”. He cites Germany, committed to achieving 30% organic agriculture by 2030 under its Organic Strategy 2030, as a prime example.
Bring on the game-changers
Holmbeck says it is vital that organic policy gives proper focus to both ‘push’ (organic production and farm conversion) and ‘pull’ (market development) components. He highlights a need to strengthen the ‘pull’, and argues that much more needs to be done by most member states to stimulate market growth. Here, retailers and public kitchen operators can play a crucial role, he adds.
Holmbeck argues that hitting the 25% target will require game-changer policies, such as lower VAT on organic food (as recommended to member states by the EU Commission). Buy he also points out the importance of active sectoral engagement with ministries and policy makers. “In the countries I have been working with I often find that ministry officials genuinely want to upscale organic, so we – the organic industry – need to be there providing technical and policy support.”
Motor for change
Michaël Wilde, founder of The Organic Embassy (pictured), is clear that the Farm to Fork strategy – and its 25% organic target – remains the principal “motor for change”. He was in London in late 2024 (where he gave the keynote at the Soil Association Trade Conference) to explain how a new national action plan is reinvigorating the Dutch organic industry. With the bold objective of growing organic agriculture from the current 5% of cultivated farmland to 15% by 2030, the plan – backed by €80 million of government funding – is now driving growth across the whole sector.
He commented: “Farm to Fork is the reason why we have an action plan, it’s the reason why supermarkets are moving forward, it’s the reason why large companies are saying that 20 to 25% of the food we serve to our employees must in future be organic.
We don’t have to defend organic anymore
“What’s so important about this is that we don’t have to defend organic in the Netherlands anymore. This is the Dutch government saying that organic is a key part of the solution for the sustainable agriculture transition. This makes it much easier for us to move forward together with companies, NGOs and municipalities. We can now say to them: Don’t choose organic because the Dutch Government wants you to use organic – choose organic because it enables you to fix the challenges you have.”
“We can now say to them: Don’t choose organic because the Dutch Government wants you to use organic – choose organic because it enables you to fix the challenges you have”
Unprecedented consensus
In September 2024 the European Commission published the final report of the Strategic Dialogue, a major-cross sector review of EU food and farming that aimed to “shift the debate away from the current polarisation”. Ordinarily, this might not be the sort of thing to get the blood pumping. But the report’s standout conclusion that organic “is the only regulated sustainable production system that already delivers environmental and climate protection” certainly provided the organic sector with an energising end-of-year boost.
IFOAM Organics Europe president, Jan Plagge, captured the significance of this development at a hearing of the European Parliament committee for Agriculture when he commented on the “unprecedented consensus” (strikingly, the report’s recommendations are backed by farming lobby groups, food companies, retailers and biotech companies as well as environmental and consumer organisations – behind the declaration.
Just two months later, new analysis by experts appointed by the Commission, found that conversion to organic farming was among three farming practices that contribute the most to EU climate objectives. The study’s findings underlined organic’s “essential role” in meeting climate targets, Eric Gall, deputy director at IFOAM Organics Europe, reminded policy makers.
Clarity on organic versus regenerative
While it is likely that a whole toolbox of approaches – organic, agroecological and regenerative – will be needed to achieve the transition to sustainable agriculture, there is growing concern that regenerative agriculture (or ‘rergen ag’) is becoming a significant vehicle for greenwashing. But it could be that we are starting to see regulators clamping down on this damaging trend. In November, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) issued new advice aimed at “cultivating compliance” in the regenerative agriculture sector. The ASA says advertisers must also avoid “absolute claims” – such as ‘regenerative’, nature-friendly’ or ‘sustainable’ – unless they can be supported with “a very high level of substantiation”. And the watchdog warns specifically against “making misleading comparisons with other farming systems, such as organic”.
Urgent climate priorities
The dramatic effects of global heating seen across Europe in 2024 – record-high temperatures, devastating floods in Spain and Germany, severe drought and wildfires – will bring added urgency to the climate impacts of agriculture and could finally produce a decisive shift in governmental and institutional recognition of the huge mitigation potential of organic and agroecological farming systems.
Despite the framing of the 2024 farmers’ protests as ‘anti-green’ by parts of the media and political opportunists), their actions have served to highlight deeper problems that exist in farming – low farm gate prices, inflated land prices, small farm decline and, increasingly, crop failures due the direct effects of global heating.
Away from the headlines, the reality is that many farmers want to be responsible stewards of the land. As Michaël Wilde said in London: “most farmers I speak to, particularly the younger ones, want to farm sustainably and are often open to organic – but they want to be supported and paid properly for helping with the sustainable farming transformation.” We must hope that in 2025 that their message is heard, so that the momentum for substantive change becomes irresistible.
This article was originally commissioned and published by Bio Eco Actual
