Contact first name: Gillian
Contact last name: Westbrook
Contact email: gillian.westbrook@irishoa.ie
Street: Unit 13 Inish Carraig
Postal code: N37 N1W4
City: Golden Island Athlone
State: Co. Westmeath
Country: Ireland
Website:
| Deliverable | Notes |
|---|---|
| 1 - Set of principles and attributes | As an organic certification body the Irish Organic Association continually promote organic food and farming methods in order to encourage the adoption of organic sustainable food production systems. The Irish Organic Association’s farmer led Field Talk programme encourages conventional farmers to explore in greater detail organic production by inviting them onto participating organic farms to see first-hand how an organic farm operates. This works very well at encouraging farmers to convert to organic and sustainable food systems. |
| 3 - Actual data on sustainable production and consumption | The Irish Organic Association are the lead partners in the first round of the European Innovation Partnership project in Ireland. The project is called Maximizing Organic Production Systems (MOPS) and it aims to develop a cropping system for 11 participating farmers who will work collaboratively to create a more efficient supply chain for Irish organic horticultural products. MOPS will monitor production on each farm to get a more informed picture of production at farm level and further up the supply chain in order to improve efficiencies on farm and establish market demands. |
| 4 - Policy reform proposals/arguments | The Irish Organic Association are active participants in the development of agricultural policy in Ireland sitting on a variety of committees including the Rural Development Committee that examines the Common Agricultural Policy framework both in Ireland and in the EU. Gillian Westbrook the Irish Organic Association CEO, is on the Organic Farming Sector Strategy Group and is currently involved in devising an organic strategy for Ireland up to 2025 with other stakeholders selected by the Department of Agriculture. She is also outgoing Chair of the IFOAM EU Council and is engaged in matters concerning organic food production at EU level. |
| 5 - Training and education tools | The Irish Organic Association produces a magazine called Organic Matters which we circulate to our members and it contains a variety of information relevant to organic food and farming both in Ireland and globally. This resource is extremely useful on a practical level to Irish organic farmers, and indeed to policy makers to illustrate the potentials of organic food and farming. The Irish Organic Association run a school project for Transition Year Students (approximately 16yrs old) called Organic Farm to School. This project is funded by the Department of Agriculture in Ireland and it links specific schools with an organic farmer in their area to introduce them to the concept of organic farming. The project also explores sustainable food production and how it impacts on wider issues such as biodiversity, soil health, animal welfare and climate change. The Irish Organic Association will run this project again in 2018. |
| 8 - Clusters/knowledge sharing | As a lead partner in an EIP project called MOPS we are engaging with farmers to establish a body of knowledge about organic horticulture in Ireland. This is participatory by nature and the data is live data collected on farms spread regionally around the country. Knowledge gained from this project will be shared with a variety of stakeholder and identified interested parties in order to encourage sustainable food production and consumption. In addition to the EIP project we work closely with our members to highlight the benefits of organic farming. One way in which we do this is our Field Talk programme (outlined above Deliverable 1) which is a farmer led programme where organic farming techniques are explored in detail on farm. It is very popular with all farmers but especially with new farming entrants. This very practical programme works well at transferring knowledge about production methods to the relevant target groups. |