[Agriculture et Environnement:] How do you analyze [the recent “Naked Organic”] campaign launched by certain players in the organic sector on social networks to warn that their [government] aid would decrease?
[Engineer and economist Laurent Pahpy:] The fact that the profession organized the “naked organic” campaign shows that the sector is worried about the survival of organic without public funding, and reveals that a large number of farms would not be viable without this very artificial external agent that is the taxpayer’s money.
And its promoters are absolutely right! As several examples clearly show, when aid is no longer maintained, a significant proportion of farms converted to organic revert to conventional.
This was the case in the 2000s in Italy and the United Kingdom, where, with the organic milk crisis, organic surfaces declined significantly. But also, between 2000 and 2008, in Denmark and Finland, where organic farms decreased by 20%, mainly for economic reasons and by lack of subsidies.
[I]n France, according to [the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, or] INSEE analyses, when we measure aid per unit of product, per hectare, or per head, organic is more subsidized than conventional for milk, viticulture and market gardening.
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in French and has been translated and edited for clarity.]
