The Soil Association today announced the appointment of Rob Haward, operations director at Riverford Organic Vegetables, as grower representative on its standards board, following an open recruitment process. This appointment completes the Soil Association’s new, independent standards board. Rob Haward, operations director of Riverford Organic Vegetables, said “I am delighted to have been appointed. I hope my input will be of value to the Soil Association in enabling them to continue to lead the way on standards development. This process is essential in order to protect consumers, while balancing the technical constraints of growers.” The Soil Association Standards Board is responsible for maintaining and developing all of the Association’s...

According to an article appearing in today’s Otago Daily Times, Stu Burt and Lyn Williamson, owners of Destination Organic – an organic superstore in Queenstown New Zealand – are so confident that organic food is cheaper than conventional food that they’re stumping up their own cash to prove it. Essentially, they’re asking the people of Queenstown to try organic food for themselves so that they can realise first hand the associated taste and health benefits. They want to find two families to be an organic test case. They will track their shopping for four weeks, keeping note of their expenditure, and will then subsidise their shopping at Destination Organic by $150 a week for four weeks, to make a comparison between the costs...

What do you call a vacation where you don’t go anywhere? According to JT from The Environmental Blog you call it a “staycation”. I like that idea – a stay at home vacation. Think about it for a minute – no rushing around in planes, trains or buses, no credit card bills to pay immediately following your vacation, and no long car journeys involving a repetitious series of questions starting with, “Are we there yet?” Yep – this is the only no aggravation, low carbon footprint, money saving vacation idea I’ve heard of. And what’s more, if approached sensibly, it has the potential to deliver a lot of fun for everyone in the family! JT, I take my hat off to you… Okay, so what do you do on a “staycation”? Well, The...

Climate change has brought with it a raft of terms that, unless you’re involved in the field, are unlikely to be common knowledge. To co-incide with the release of The Organic Answer to Climate Change, I thought it might be useful to provide a glossary of commonly used climate change terms. Even though the list is by no means complete it does provide a decent lead into the topic. Like it or not, it looks like we’re all bound to hear a lot more about climate change in the years to come. If you’re keen to learn more right now, you might like to check out Dr Glen Barry’s Climate Ark Blog and also the Climate Change Action blog. Both of these are excellent resources. In the mean time, here are those terms… Abatement...

With just over one week until the start of the Organic World Congress in Modena, Italy, five finalists for the prestigious One World Award, which is sponsored by IFOAM, have been announced. The award aims to recognize people committed to permanently protecting and conserving the world we enjoy. The five finalists of the One World Award 2008 have all shown extraordinary commitment to protecting the viability of the planet for future generations. In doing so, they have demonstrated that the future of globalization is positive. The finalists are: Harald Schützeichel started the foundation for solar energy in Ethiopia in 2004 with the aim of supplying the rural population of Africa with energy. He is consistently trying “to help people...