Just three percent of the organic food consumers came from the economically depressed south while 80 percent were from the rich north of Italy. The area devoted to organic farming in Italy is some one million hectares, double the level of three years ago, Italian organic farmers said. As drivers for new policy reform the German Federal Government and the EU agricultural policy-makers need to understand this and thus give signals to the population that any significant change needs broad support. The UBA and BfN have maintained for years that conventional agriculture loads the environment in various ways and is a heavy consumer of natural resources but accounting for these factors remained to a large extent ignored. The change to more sustainable food production is currently focussed on gaining the support of the farmers but it should concern the integration of policy and support through the entire chain including agricultural, environmental and consumer policy.
Organic agriculture is the most commonly held example of a sustainable food production system.
However, mass conversion of conventional agricultural operations to organic ones cannot happen overnight and there is a spectrum of practices between the two extremes that can be implemented. However, this requires some fundamental system changes, because the entire management and organization of the industry, up to the point of sale, needs to change. For the time being the majority of the agricultural surface area will remain conventionally managed so the environmental impacts of these operations must be reduced as far as possible which could be substantially assisted by the adoption of so-called good technical practice, which sets minimum requirements. Good technical practice must be supplemented and developed further with environmental and natural protection criteria. The Common Agricultural Policy of the European union must continue to develop subsidy practices that support environmental and nature protection.