The Green Party said today it aims to increase organic production in Ireland more than fivefold by 2012.
Minister of State with responsibility for food and horticulture Trevor Sargent said the strategy to drive the largest expansion of organic farming ever seen in Ireland will be published “within days”.
Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Dundalk, Co Louth, Mr Sargent said the organic market was worth €66 million in 2006, and that by 2012 it is predicted to reach €400 million.
“EU wide, the demand for organic food is increasing. However, 70 per cent of organic food sold in Ireland has to be imported.
“More farmers growing organically in Ireland would mean more jobs at home and less energy used worldwide.”
Mr Sargent said that to achieve food security in the face of climate change and peak oil will need “more than an organic strategy”.
“We must guard against the introduction of genetically modified crops. GM crops are a contamination threat to biodiversity and would undermine organic and conventional non-GM farming.
“I am working closely with [Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment] John Gormley on this issue. I believe we will succeed, because 80 per cent of EU consumers want their food to be clean, green and GM-free,” Mr Sargent said.
He said EU consumers could not currently get enough organic food.
“This explains to some extent why farmers markets, allotments and community gardens have become so popular. Meanwhile, many farmers are not getting a fair percentage of the price which shoppers pay for fresh produce.”
“For example, out of the €5 a shopper pays for a bag of potatoes, the farmer gets only €1 while the packer gets €2 and the shop takes a further €2.”
The Minister said he had met with all the large multiples to make this point.
“Starving the farmers of a viable return will kill the ‘goose that lays the golden egg’ for supermarkets. Ireland needs farmers and it needs more young people to take up farming.”
Mr Sargent acknowledged what he said were “successes and frustrations” since the Green Party went into Government with Fianna Fáil last year.
But he said it was with “immense pride and satisfaction” that the party was putting its visions into action now in Government.
Mr Sargent praised party leader John Gormley as a “political street fighter and a good friend to me and to the Green Party”.
“He has come from a campaigning background to be the man who chaired the Green Party negotiations which led to the greenest ever programme for government.”
He said the party needed to build on its success and to succeed in a year’s time at the local and European elections.