Organic farms “better for jobs”

Quantity and quality of employment higher, says report

If all our farms were organic, rather than just 4% of them, there’d be a big boost in employment on the land. A 32% boost, to be precise, according to a survey for the Soil Association. That’s mainly because the kind of husbandry required is simply more labour intensive. So expanding organics could be one way to reverse the steady decline in the number of jobs for farm workers. The Soil Association’s report Organic works says there were just 183,600 in 2003 - compared with nearly five times that number in 1952. It’s not just the quantity of work that’s higher - it’s the quality too. Among organic farmers, 64% expect their family to take on the farm, compared to an industry-wide figure of only 51%. They are more entrepreneurial - three times as likely to be involved in direct marketing schemes, for instance - and younger, too, with an average age of 49 compared with 56 for their non-organic counterparts. Not surprising, then, that enquiries for converting to organic production have more than doubled over the last year.

8 July 2006