Abstract
As production processes become more globalized, the impact of public and private standards can reach far beyond nation–state borders. This is the case, as in the area of food standards, where market regions set standards that have to be followed and met by producers and manufacturers in locations all over the world. The effects of this development reach from improved production processes (e.g. environmentally or regarding worker protection) on the one hand, to an exclusion of large numbers of potential producers (e.g. smallholder farmers in developing countries) on the other. There has also been discussion on the impacts of these standards on global and local food security.
By the example of two national organic standards systems with differing regulatory implications, the European Union (EU) (legally mandatory certification) and Australian (voluntary certification), this chapter aims to give an insight into the impacts and significance of these standards in (international) trade coordination, which key drivers are behind their implementation, and which positive but also challenging consequences can arise for the affected actors along the organic value chain at different geographical locations. With special focus on the sustainability potential of these standards for local and global agrifood systems and the potential contribution of organic agriculture to food security, it is shown that (1) while organic standards explicitly prescribe more environmentally friendly farming and production methods, there is scope for further research which scientifically proves its long-term sustainability and contribution to food security, (2) government regulation is important to promote the growth of sustainable certified organic food systems, and (3) there is need for further mutual recognition of standards worldwide to reduce exclusion of suppliers from developing countries.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For food standards, see also e.g. literature summarized in Higgins et al. (2010).
- 2.
These include, respectively, e.g. mad cow disease, swine flu, dioxin, E. coli contamination, and the discussion around whaling and oil leakages.
- 3.
For example 1986: National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA); more followed in the 1990s/2000s; the peak body Organic Federation of Australia (OFA) was founded in 1997.
- 4.
The past two centuries of European settlement have caused considerable ecological damage through the introduction of alien flora and fauna, unfavourable climatic conditions including drought and flooding, and habitat destruction from extensive tree clearing and urbanization. In combination with relatively infertile soils and inadequate farming methods, these factors have led to land degradation by soil erosion, salinity and deforestation.
- 5.
See Higgins et al., 2010 for a case on Environmental Management Standards in the Australian dairy industry.
- 6.
Generally speaking, very few standards are actually mandated in Australia, the general approach being to leave the market to regulate itself and only interfere when obvious market failure can be observed.
- 7.
‘Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. (World Food Summit 1996 in Halberg et al., 2009) Four dimensions of food security are defined as: food availability, food access, food stability, food utilization.
- 8.
This latter view is interesting in so far as that (a) productivist agricultural practices (as found e.g. in Europe, Australia or the US) have been shown to include a broader set of practices that are ‘widely recognized as environmentally damaging and probably unsustainable in the long term’ (Andrée et al., 2010; Dibden & Cocklin, 2005, 2009), and (b) that organic standards, both in the EU as well as in Australia, have the explicit objectives to be sustainable. They accordingly prescribe detailed farming practices aiming to improve environmental management. These include, for instance, rules on biodiversity, landscape-, soil- and water management, plant protection and livestock husbandry.
- 9.
There are still variations between the organic standards held by major economies with a high organic market share worldwide and mutual acceptance is still not always given.
- 10.
Recent years have also shown the establishment of purely organic supermarket chains, such as basic or Alnatura in Germany.
- 11.
Certifiers are accredited by Government authorities. In most European countries, certifiers are private, nongovernmental businesses that are independent of standard-setting (organic farmers’) associations. In Australia, many organic farmers associations are simultaneously standard developers/holders and certifiers of these standards (or have subsidiaries).
- 12.
Currently accepted are the EC-Eco-regulation, USA National Organic Programme (USA NOP), Switzerland, Japan, Canada, Taiwan and New Zealand; as well as the IFOAM group of standards.
- 13.
Some studies show that this may not apply to such a degree to noncertified organic farming on the local level for own consumption e.g. in developing countries.
- 14.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
- 15.
See Dibden, Higgins, & Cocklin (2011) for a discussion of the harmonization down-process in the context of the Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Agreement (SPSA) as part of World Trade Organization measures.
References
Andrée, P., Dibden, J., Higgins, V., & Cocklin, C. (2010). Competitive productivism and Australia’s emerging ‘alternative’ agri-food networks: producing for farmers’ markets in Victoria and beyond. Australian Geographer, 41(3), 307–322.
Badgley, C., Moghtader, J., Quintero, E., Zakem, E., Chappell, J. M., Aviles-Vázquez, K., Samulon, A., & Perfecto, I. (2007). Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22(2), 86–108.
Bernzen, A., & Dannenberg, P. (2012). Ein “Visum” für Obst. Umwelt- und Sozialstandards im internationalen Lebensmittelhandel. Geographische Rundschau, 64(3), 44–52.
Best, H. (2008). Organic agriculture and the conventionalization hypothesis: A case study from Western Germany. Agriculture and Human Values, 25(1), 95–106.
Bingen, J., & Busch, L. (2006). Shaping a Policy and Research Agenda. In J. Bingen & L. Busch (Eds.), Agricultural standards: The shape of the global food and fiber system (pp. 245–250). Dordrecht: Springer.
BÖLW, Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft (Ed.) (2010). Zahlen, Daten, Fakten: Die Bio-Branche 2010. Bonn.
Braun, B. (2005). Building global institutions: The diffusion of management standards in the world economy—an institutional perspective. In C. G. Alvstam & E. Schamp (Eds.), Linking industries across the world: Processes of global networking (pp. 3–27). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Burkitt, L. L., Small, D. R., McDonald, J. W., Wales, W. J., & Jenkin, M. L. (2007). Comparing irrigated biodynamic and conventionally managed dairy farms. 1. Soil and pasture properties. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, 47(5), 479–488.
Busch, L., & Bain, C. (2004). New! improved? The transformation of the global agrifood system. Rural Sociology, 69(3), 321–346.
Connor, D. J. (2008). Organic agriculture cannot feed the world. Field Crops Research, 106, 187–190.
Dannenberg, P. (2008). Challenges for African food producer in the integration in international value chains—The example of the food standard GlobalGAP in the horticultural production region Mt. Kenya. Zentralblatt für Geologie und Paläontologie, Teil I, 3(4), 337–353.
Diamond, J. M. (2005). Collapse. How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking.
Dibden, J., & Cocklin, C. (2005). Sustainability and agri-environmental governance. In V. Higgins & G. Lawrence (Eds.), Agricultural governance: Globalization and the new politics of regulation (pp. 135–152). London: Routledge.
Dibden, J., & Cocklin, C. (2009). ‘Multifunctionality’: Trade protectionism or a new way forward? Environment and Planning A, 41(1), 163–182.
Dibden, J., Higgins, V., & Cocklin, C. (2011). Harmonizing the governance of farming risks: Agricultural biosecurity and biotechnology in Australia. Australian Geographer, 42(2), 105–122.
Dumaresq, D., & Greene, R. (2001). Soil structure, fauna and phosphorus in sustainable cropping systems. RIRDC Publication No. 01/130. Retrieved August 12, 2011 from https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/01-130.
El-Hage Scialabba, N. (2007, May 3–5). Organic agriculture and food security. Conference document. International Conference on Agriculture and Food Security, Rome, Italy.
Gereffi, G., Humphrey, J., & Sturgeon, T. (2005). The governance of global value chains. Review of International Political Economy, 12(1), 78–104.
González, A. A., & Nigh, R. (2005). Smallholder participation and certification of organic farm products in Mexico. Journal of Rural Studies, 21, 449–460.
Grolink (2010). The organic certification directory. In: The organic standard 113.
Halberg, N., Peramaiyan, P., & Walaga C. (2009). Is organic farming an unjustified luxury in a world with too many hungry people? In H. Willer, H. L. Kilcher (Eds.), The world of organic agriculture. Statistics & Emerging Trends 2009 (pp. 95–100). Frick and Bonn: FiBL and IFOAM.
Hatanaka, M., Bain, C., & Busch, L. (2005). Third-party certification in the global agrifood system. Food Policy, 30, 354–369.
Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N., & Wai-Chung Yeung, H. (2002). Global production networks and the analysis of economic development. Review of International Political Economy, 9(3), 436–464.
Henryks, J., & Pearson, D. (2010). Misreading between the lines: Consumer confusion over organic food labeling. Australian Journal of Communication, 37(3), 73–86.
Higgins, V., Dibden, J., & Cocklin, C. (2008). Building alternative agri-food networks: Certification, embeddedness and agri-environmental governance. Journal of Rural Studies, 24(1), 15–27.
Higgins, V., Dibden, J., & Cocklin, C. (2010). Adapting Standards: The Case of Environmental Management Systems in Australia. In V. Higgins & W. Larner (Eds.), Calculating the social: Standards and the re-configuration of governing (pp. 167–184). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
IBISWorld. (2010): Organic farming In Australia. Retrieved May 5, 2011 from http://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry/default.aspx?indid=1912.
Jones, R. (2010). Green harvest: A history of organic farming and gardening in Australia. Collingwood: CSIRO.
Kirchmann, H., Bergström, L., Kätterer, T., Andrén, O., & Andersson, R. (2008). Can organic crop production feed the world? In H. Kirchmann & L. Bergström (Eds.), Organic crop production—Ambitions and limitations (pp. 39–72). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kristiansen, P., Taji, A., & Reganold, J. (Eds.). (2006). Organic agriculture. A global perspective. New York: Comstock.
Kulke, E. (2008). Wirtschaftsgeographie. Paderborn: Schöningh UTB.
Lockie, S. (2006). Capturing the sustainability agenda: Organic foods and media discourses on food scares, environment, genetic engineering and health. Agriculture and Human Values, 23(3), 313–323.
Lockie, S., Lyons, K., Lawrence, G., & Halpin, D. (2006). Going organic. mobilising networks for environmentally responsible food production. Cambridge: CABI.
Mitchell, A., Kristiansen, P., Bez, N., & Monk, A. (2010). Australian organic market report 2010. Chermside: Biological Farmers of Australia.
Mutersbaugh, T., Klooster, D., Renard, M.-C., & Taylor, P. (2005). Certifying rural spaces: Quality-certified products and rural governance. Journal of Rural Studies, 21, 381–388.
Nadvi, K. (2008). Global standards, global governance and the organization of global value chains. Journal of Economic Geography, 8(3), 323–343.
Nadvi, K., & Wältring, F. (2002). Making sense of global standards. INEF Report 58. Duisburg: Gerhard-Mercator University.
Ouma, S. (2010). global standards, local realities: Private agrifood governance and the restructuring of the Kenyan horticulture industry. Economic Geography, 86(2), 197–222.
Parrott, N., & Marsden, T. (2002). The real green revolution: organic and agroecological farming in the south. London: Greenpeace Environmental Trust.
Paull, J. (2010). The future of organic agriculture: Otopia or oblivion? Innovative Science, I, 11–14.
Penfold, C., Miyan, M., Reeves, T., & Grierson, I. (1995). Biological farming for sustainable agricultural production. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, 35, 849–856.
Thiers, P. (2006). China and Global Organic Food Standards: Sovereignty Bargains and Domestic Politics. In J. Bingen & L. Busch (Eds.), Agricultural standards: The shape of the global food and fiber system (pp. 193–217). New York: Springer.
Trewavas, A. (2004). A critical assessment of organic farming-and-food assertions with particular respect to the UK and the potential environmental benefits of no-till agriculture. Crop Protection, 23, 757–781.
Wells, A. T., Chan, K. Y., & Cornish, P. S. (2000). Comparison of conventional and alternative vegetable farming systems on the properties of a yellow earth in New South Wales. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 80, 47–60.
Willer, H., & Kilcher, L. (Eds.) Punkt weg. (2011). The world of organic agriculture. Statistics and emerging trends 2011. Bonn and Frick: IFOAM and FiBL.
Wynen, E. (2007). standards and compliance systems for organic and bio-dynamic agriculture in Australia: Past, present and future. Journal of Organic Systems, 2(2), 38–55.
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on work supported by the German Research Foundation under the research project ‘ImPOrt’. I am grateful for the constructive feedback of one anonymous reviewer, as well as for support received by Boris Braun, Peter Dannenberg and Paul Kristiansen.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bernzen, A. (2013). ‘Sustainable Standards’? How Organic Standards in the EU and Australia Affect Local and Global Agrifood Production and Value Chains. In: Farmar-Bowers, Q., Higgins, V., Millar, J. (eds) Food Security in Australia. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4484-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4484-8_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4483-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-4484-8
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)