For an Organic Future – Capacities and Capacity Building

By Didem Aydurmus PhD, HNEE

One of the first tasks of the OrganicAdviceNetwork was to map the diversity of existing organicadvisory systems across Europe. More than 350 advisory services andnon-affiliated advisors engaged in organic farming participated in a survey between November 2024 and February 2025. This survey now gives insights into the contemporary advisory landscape, its functioning, strengths, and potential capacities. Much of the collected data will not surprise seasoned people in the field, however having supportive evidence is beneficial for a deeper understanding of the status quo and as a foundationfor strengthening and enhancing organic farm advisory systems.

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‍Insights – the Organic Farm Advisory

Predictably, most advisory services are micro-business according to the European Union’sdefinition, meaning that they have less than ten employees. The survey still covered 2900 subcontracted advisors and more than 3500 employed advisors. The sector where most are engaged in is arable, independent of location. Overall, the second most served sector is fruits followed by vegetables. Indoor farming as well as pig and poultry production by contrast, only play a minor role inorganic advice. As the market for pig and poultry is relatively small, this was to be expected. Looking towards future solutions with ever more climate instabilities, it will be interesting to see, whether advice work on indoor production is going to increase.

Particularly note worthy in regard to the workings and the future of organic farm advice is financing and compensation. Most advisory services rely on a mixture of public and private money. Not a single source of compensation was dominant (options in the survey ranged between completely free, partly paid by public funds to price per service and subscription). 16% were involved in sales (e.g. equipment).Strikingly, there appears to be no significant difference between the financing and compensation for organic and conventional farm advice. This could indicate that there is a lack of funding specifically tailored towards organic farm advice in particular and therefore towards the 25% target of the European Union. Fortunately, this question is currently studied by the OrganicAdviceNetwork in greater detail.

The current dataset contained 44% of services that only work in the organic sector. Overall, 59% of the time spent by employed advisors dedicated to organic farming. Predictably, the most requested service in the last two years was technical advice, followed by assistance to application for public funding and conversion advice. More than 70% of the advisory services offered three or more services, while 15%offered even more than ten different services. While technical and conversion advice is time clearly spent towards the goal of a more organic future, time spent on bureaucracy could possibly be spent better in the field. Hence results clearly hint at the necessity to improve and simplify funding regulations andeven more application processes. This could free up capacities.

An Organic Advice Network

Lastly, organisations hold stronger and weaker ties. Many existing connections across Europe are possibly driven by European projects forging long last relationships. For building an organic future it is fruitful to strengthen the ties, forming a network in an ever changing political and environmental climate can provide more resilience to the organic advisory system.

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