Providing more jobs through organic farming and local food supply
Organic works demonstrates that organic farming is helping to reverse the decline in the UK's agricultural workforce, which has fallen by 80% in the last 50 years.
This report, based on the first national survey of labour on UK organic farms by the University of Essex, shows that organic farms in the UK provide more jobs per farm than non-organic agriculture. In contrast to the ageing overall farming population, organic farmers also tend to be younger than their non-organic counterparts. Organic farmers are also more likely to be engaged in business innovations activities, such as direct marketing and on-farm processing, significantly adding value to the food they produce.
This new research demonstrates that farming jobs are a positive indicator of a healthy and vibrant farming model – modern farming can be both profitable and increase employment. Farming jobs provide significant economic, social, ecological and long-term security benefits to society as a whole. Not only does organic farming increase agricultural employment, but it is also economically productive and socially and environmentally sustainable.
Hope for the future
Organic works also records the dramatic decline in farm workers over the last 50 years, with employment by 80%. Changes to farm practises have replaced skilled labour with agrochemicals and larger machinery, and have been coupled with the increased size and simplification of farms. The move towards bigger, more 'efficient' farming has not only exacted a toll on the environment. It has also heralded dire consequences for the people who work on the land and the number of farm workers has fallen by nearly 80% since the 1950s.
In contrast, organic farms create more job opportunities because they require more people and skills to manage crops, the soil and farm animals. Organic farms also tend to be more diverse which means that they require a correspondingly larger number of people and skills to fulfil a wider range of jobs.
Looking beyond our shores to the developing world, employment in agriculture is an issue of global humanitarian importance. A skilled agricultural workforce is vital to safeguard livelihoods and ensure global food security. Rather than replacing this valuable human resource with increasingly expensive and scarce inputs of oil-based agrochemicals and fertilisers, developing countries should adopt and develop sustainable food production systems that keep people working on and living off the land.
Key findings from Organic works:
- Organic farming in the UK provides 32% more jobs per farm than equivalent non-organic farms.
- If all farming in the UK became organic over 93,000 new jobs directly employed on farms would be created.
- Organic farming is attracting younger people into farming compared to the farming industry as a whole. On average, organic farmers in the UK are seven years younger than non-organic farmers, whose average age is 56.
- Organic farming is also attracting more new entrants to agriculture. A recent Defra-funded survey of farms in England found that 31% of organic farmers had entered agriculture as an entirely new career and did not come from a farming family, compared to 21% of the non-organic sample.
- Organic farms are also more likely to be involved in on-farm processing, marketing and retailing, building on the trust and connection between farmers and consumers of organic food.
Is farm work good work?
The Food Ethics Council debated the value of farm labour in the Spring 2007 edition of
Food Ethics magazine. Michael Green, Soil Association policy officer, said:
"Yes... farmers and farm workers have the skills and knowledge we need to produce good quality food and to care for the countryside... [But] skilled labour has been replaced with agrochemicals and larger machinery as farms have become larger... If the wider economic and social benefits of agricultural jobs are re-evaluated, then this could revive the status of farming as a career." Read the
full article.
Other contributors included
The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence, Minister of State for Sustainable Farming and Food, Lord Rooker and Shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, Peter Ainsworth is MP.
Transport and General Workers' Union
The T&G is pleased as the UK's leading rural trade union to be supporting the important work of the Soil Association in promoting the organic farming sector. We believe that the development of this vital industry is pivotal to helping regenerate agriculture as a major employer, with a major role in the rural economy.
We believe that now objective research underlines the fact that organic farming provides significant employment potential it is time for key policy makers and practitioners to add vital support to the organic sector and in so doing to the broader rural economy.
» Transport and General Workers' Union website
» Read a summary of the report
» Download the full report [PDF, 1.5 MB]
» Press release
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