Policy for organic farming: Rationale and concepts

Since the mid 1980s, organic farming has become the focus of significant attention from policy-makers, consumers, environmentalists and farmers in Europe and state institutions have become increasingly involved in regulating and supporting the organic sector. Reflecting the multiple goals for organic farming and for agricultural policy, a varied and complex range of policy measures have been developed and implemented to support the organic sector. However, balancing societal and consumer/market goals and balancing institutional and private stakeholder interests in the organic sector present particular challenges for policy-making. The key issues of current organic farming policy addressed in this special issue therefore specifically consider the two different dimensions of policy development - the dimension of policies and the dimension of politics. This paper provides an introduction to the special issue by outlining organic farming policy development in the EU, providing the basic concepts of organic farming policies in Europe and introducing the key themes of the papers published in this special issue.