Evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming

In June 2004 the European Commission published the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming. The plan set out a range of policy measure to support the development of the organic sector in order to meet consumer demands in a market-oriented way and to deliver public goods such as environmental protection and animal welfare. The measures included revision of the regulation defining organic food, support for organic farming through the rural development programme and a consumer promotion campaign.

The EC-funded research project ORGAP*, which ran from 2005-2008 and is now completed, was developed to provide scientific support for the implementation of the European Action Plan and the evaluation of its long-term and short-term effects. This included:

• the development of an evaluation toolbox (hyperlink to ORGAPET) to help evaluate and monitor the implementation of the European and national organic action plans
• the involvement of stakeholders in identifying key objectives and indicators, as well as potential problems implementing the EU action plan in member states and other failure risks
• developing a manual for stakeholders as an introduction to action plan development, implementation and evaluation.
  ORGAP manual (2.3 MB) (.pdf, 2.3 MB)

*Development of criteria and procedures for the evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Agriculture (contract no. 006591).

In June 2013 an update of the website and the links to the national Organic Action Plan was made by FiBL, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture.