Policies supporting organic food and farming in the EU: assessment and development by stakeholders in 11 European countries

There is no single 'best way' of policy development. Bottom- up approaches to policy design and a broad debate among stakeholders facilitate policy learning and innovation. A novel approach of a bottom- up policy design process involving stakeholders is introduced. First results obtained by this methodology are presented. The outcomes of a large international effort for a development of policies for organic food and farming in Mai 2004 in Europe are analyzed: the synthesized results from 11 European countries (AT, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, GB, HU, IT, PL, SI) on the current situation of policies related to the organic food market in Europe are highlighted and policy recommendations for the development of the organic food and farming sector formulated. Specifically, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of policies related to organic food market are identified and policy instrument s to address these aspects are developed.