“The demand is there and organic farming is a vast marketing opportunity for farmers, but it is still expensive to convert,” said a spokeswoman.Gareth Rowlands and his wife, Rachel, run Rachel’s Dairy, in Dol-Y-Bont, near Aberystwyth, which has been an organic farm since 1946 and is one of Britain’s largest organic dairy farms.”We are working with nature as opposed to working against it,” said Mr Rowlands.The Rowlands’ farm comprises 300 acres and incorporates 100 head of beef, 200 sheep and 30 acres of cereal crops as well as 80 milking cows.”We don’t use pesticides,” Mr Rowlands explained. As a result, retailers import 70 per cent of the organic produce sold in Britain.In contrast, organic farming represents 10 per cent of all farming in Austria, while in Germany, Denmark and Sweden the figure is more than 5 per cent, according to the Soil Association, a charity which lobbies for greater use of organic farming methods. Market analysts predict that organic food will take a 10 per cent share in highly developed countries within the next five years.The traditional problem with organic food is that it is highly perishable and vulnerable to attack by pests, leaving farmers with lower profit margins. Retailers encounter higher costs, sporadic availability and unappetising blemished skin on some produce.But the benefits are numerous, according to Simon Brenman of the Soil Association: food is tasty, nutritious, grown without chemicals or genetic modification, and is good for animal welfare and the environment.The Soil Association last year opened a helpline for farmers looking at adopting organic methods, but the number of organic farms – 1,000 – is tiny compared with the 200,000 conventional farms in Britain.The major stumbling block is the size of government grants to help farmers through a conversion period to organic methods. But the output from organic farming in Britain remains among the lowest in Europe. Yet organic produce accounts for less than 0.5 per cent of all fruit and vegetables grown in Britain.

“In some member states the success of organic farming is overwhelming. In others, like the UK, it unfortunately still lags behind,” he told a recent conference on organic farming in Oxford.
Demand for organic food is increasing by 30 per cent every year and the UK market has risen from pounds 40m in 1987 to pounds 150m in 1994, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Now the European Union’s farming commissioner, Franz Fischler, has told British farmers they are “failing to capitalise” on the demand for organic produce. It is an area of huge potential growth for farmers The demand from the public is strong and growing. And, on the same day, Shell announced that it was investing $250m in renewable energy. Could the rivals be on the verge of a sun rush?o AND IT was Mr Browne who had the best line of the day.

The BP chief described how his company was investing in it, estimating that in 50 years it could supply half the world’s energy. When I dropped in, it was churning out 460 watts, but receiving only 20 from the sun.Nevertheless, it was a good day for solar power. Naturally, it gave its friends from charities and other pressure groups a reduced rate: pounds 293.75.o THE conference, we were told, was run off solar power, and indeed a colourful lorry carrying photovoltaic cells was parked ostentatiously outside the hotel. It wasn’t even running them directly off the sun, but from batteries, which had been charged up previously and could just as well have been brought in a transit van.

In fact the lorry was only powering the microphones and projector. Other old enemies, including British Nuclear Fuels and Shell, dutifully applauded. One frustrated questioner from the floor objected: “Outside you all behave like the Spice Girls, but in here you seem to be on the wrong sort of Prozac.”o GREENPEACE described the conference as “pursuing solutions through strategic business alliances” and spoke of “building on its relationships with the business community”. The BP chief was the younger, fitter, and livelier – and would have looked at home in a wetsuit.