With the EU set to boost organic farmland, how can it maintain consumer confidence in an agricultural sector tainted by fraud?
The European Union aims to ramp up production of organic crops by three times from 8.5 percent of farmland today to 25 percent by 2030, however cases are piling up across the continent of cross-border forgery in the sector.
We investigate allegations and convictions in Romania and Italy, in a project supported by Journalism Fund, and published in Scena9 in Bucharest, and IRPIMedia in Rome.
In Romania, which is struggling to boost organic production, the two largest certified organic companies are accused of poisoning the Danube Delta, one of the largest wild areas in Europe, and a UNESCO heritage site.
Meanwhile, smaller agricultural producers, of which they are millions in Romania, are priced out of registering as organic, due to the high costs of certification.
In Italy, we question how reliable is the certification system that ensures what is on sale is truly organic?
Each member state has its own method of verifying the authenticity of organic products, including private companies and state bodies.
In Italy, companies are on trial for passing off conventional food and vegetables as organic, including in cross-border cases involving Romania and Serbia. Some observers believe the Italian certification system does not give sufficient guarantees on organic authenticity.
Paolo Carnemolla, secretary general of Italian organic association Federbio, argues his country’s certification system is “over-bureaucratised and inefficient: at the moment it produces paper but not enough reliability.”
The EU’s organic action plan from 2021 intends to “strengthen the fight against fraudulent practices and to improve traceability”, but there are so many ways to trick the system, and not enough checks and balances in place, especially at a cross-border level.
The risk is consumers may lose trust in the organic label. Already, we are witnessing, in both Italy and Romania, disillusion with the certification system. Instead, many organic farmers are growing personal relationships with their customers, where they are transparent about how they cultivate their crops, and tend their animals, and offer customers the opportunity to visit their farms.
They argue this ‘trust framework’ is a far more reliable way to show the provenance of
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Team
Vlad Odobescu
Vlad Odobescu is a Romanian journalist working with Scena9, a magazine based in Bucharest. His stories have been published by media outlets such as USA Today, Politico.eu, New Statesman, and Balkan Insight. In 2014-2015 he was a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at Arizona State University and a Milena Jesenska fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna in 2015.
Paolo Riva
Paolo Riva is a freelance journalist based between Brussels and Milan, specialized in social issues and European affairs. His work has appeared in Corriere della sera, BBC World Service, Open Migration, Il Post, Il Foglio, Q Code Magazine, and The Big Issue Zambia. He currently works for IrpiMedia, Slow News and Secondo Welfare.
Ovidiu Dunel-Stancu
Ovidiu Dunel-Stancu is a film producer and journalist, specialising in alternative culture and animal welfare, who has worked for Vice, The Black Sea, and was executive producer of comedy film Doua Lozuri (Two Lottery Tickets, 2016), a hit at the Romanian box office.
Michael Bird
Michael Bird is a freelance journalist, whose work has appeared in Vice, Decat O Revista, The Independent on Sunday, Politico, EU Observer and Mediapart. Formerly editor of The Black Sea and The Diplomat-Bucharest, he has also reported as a freelancer for BBC Radio and Deutsche Welle.
Andrei Cotrut
Andrei Cotrut is an illustrator, animator and comic books artist, who can be found under the moniker of Krank. He is from the city of angels – Constanta, Romania.
Diego Ravier
Diego Ravier is a freelance photojournalist, multimedia storyteller and educator dedicated to documenting stories of social significance.
Razvan Zamfira
Razvan Zamfira is a Romanian information designer with a background in architecture and urban studies. In 2018 he founded Studio Interrobang, a Romanian design studio focused primarily on information design and data visualization.
