Martin Husling | Fred Marvaux/European Union

Martin Husling wants the European Commission to preserve an expansive definition of organics.

By Emmet Livingstone

6/6/17, 1:05 PM CET

Updated 6/6/17, 10:28 PM CET

One of sustainable farmings old warhorses spent the better part of the lastthree years fighting to keep pesticides in organic produce.

German Green MEP Martin Husling, 56, leads the European Parliaments negotiating team in a legislative battle over the very identity of what it means to be organic.Years of grueling talks over that hotly disputed organics dossier nearly collapsed last week.

Huslings unwavering vision for the future of organic food, and his unwillingness to compromise, has likely sealed the fate of abortive legislative reform.

The debate hinges on a popular misconception about what organicreally means. Producers who use the label profit handsomely from consumers who think it means chemical-free.Thats not what the label actually mandates in the EU.

For organic farmers likeHusling and under European law the label means a series of standards and practices resulting in amore sustainable method of agricultural production.Organic products frequently contain pesticide residues.

The European Commission wants to change that with a plan to bring the industry in line with what consumers really think organic food is and limit pesticide residues.

In response, Husling said that any measure limiting pesticide levels in organic products would hamstring green-minded farmers and ultimately prove harmful to the environment. Reducing organic to a production without pesticides thats only one part of organic, Husling said. What angers me is the fact that the Commission just picked this one criterion and made it the decisive one.

Huslings opposition to the Commission has pushed the talks to the brink of collapse.

The Maltese presidency of the Council of the European Union canceled the latest negotiating round, scheduled for last Wednesday, after a majority ofgovernments rejected a proposed compromise.

Husling said last week that the reforms would fail if they are not wrapped up by the end of the month.I dont see any other possibility with us carrying on with this [afterward], he said.

If the talks do collapse, few in the organic farm industry will complain. Jan Plagge, the president of Germanys largest organic association Bioland, said that German farmers in fact routinely criticizeHusling for not fightingthe Commission hard enough.

When Husling took up the mandate, the expectation was for him stopthe process, he said.

Europes ravenous appetite fororganic food isonly abouta decadeold. Themarket nearly tripledbetween 2005 and 2015, jumpingfrom a 12-billion-a-year industry to one worth some 30 billionannually.

Brussels introducedits first tranche ofrules in 2008,but the industrys meteoric risesent policymakersback to the drawing board. Fearing the regulations were unfit for the exploding industry and fraudsters could exploit gaps, the Commission floated a change in 2014 intended to preventa massive loss of consumer trust in the sector.

Everyone agreed that several issues needed fixing, and fast. For example, the EU acceptsorganic imports from countries with vastly different rules, such as the U.S. or India, and leaves quality checks up to foreign authorities a set-up ripe for scandal.

Things got complicated when Brussels proposed controls in Europe that wouldbring organic labeling into line with what consumers cameto believe it stood for.Wehave to defend the integrity of the organic label, European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan told POLITICO last year.

The Commissions more contentiousproposals include annual controls on organic farms, forcing organic crops to be grown using onlyorganic seeds (of which there is a shortage) and most controversially decertifying products containingpesticide traces abovea certain limit.

Mainstream organic producers bridled. They had only justgrown accustomed to EU regulation, and now Brussels was proposing a fundamental rethink likely to raise theiroverheads.

The big message is that we didnt ask for this reform, said Christopher Atkinson, the head of standards at U.K. organic certifier the Soil Association. Rather than simply tightening up legislative sloppiness, what Brussels was proposing threatened to be disruptive to organic food and farming in the EU, he added.

Huslingsplace at the center of the debate gave him what will likely be the greatest political influence he will ever yield.

He is a soft-spoken, unassuming and rumpled farmer from rural Germany. His mop of untidy silver hair and collection of somber blazers project a professorial air.

Born in Hesse, he said that he was politicized when he entered local politics in 1981 for the German Green party, convinced that energy and environmental policyneeded radical change long before greenissues became as mainstream as they are today.

He took over his parents farm and, determined to make his personal lifestyle match his politics, converted it to organic in 1988. Im an organic farmer of the first guard, he said. There werent even 20 organic farmers in all of Hesse. Organic farming was a total niche.

Kellerwaldhof, Huslings farm,is a picturesque placenestled near woodlands. It boasts cows, pigs and even Shetland ponies though the lions share of revenue comes from organic cheese and milk production. Most of its power is supplied bywood or solar energy.

Husling, who was elected to Parliament in 2009, said his son and his sons girlfriend now run the farm, while his wife is still deeply involved in its day-to-day business.

ForHusling and the majority of farmers in the industry organic farming is less about protecting the consumer than preserving the planet.

If you look at where a lot of environmental problems stem from, the root cause is often agriculture Martin Husling

If you look at where a lot of environmental problems stem from, the root cause is often agriculture, said Husling, pointing out that modern agriculture produces much of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. Converting to organic will help safeguard water, soil and other natural resources a lot, he added.

The Commissions proposal to limit pesticide levels on organic produce would cripple the industry, he said. Though organic farms face strict limits on what chemicals they can use they often sit next to conventional plots, meaning traces of pesticides are impossible to prevent.

If I didwhat theCommission proposed, then Id put all the costs onto the sector thatdoesnt really use chemicals, hesaid. Thats a distortion and an unfairness thatwill pushthe organic industryback into a niche.

Powerful countries such as Germany vehemently opposed the Commissions pesticides plan.Others such as Italy are deeply committedto it. Parliament, meanwhile, underHusling, declared pesticide limits to bean undebatable red line.

The Commissionsaid in December 2014 thatif negotiators did not reach agreementwithin six months it would withdraw the proposal. And yet the talks trundled along, longer than any other legislative negotiation in recent memory, eclipsing even the length of 2013 talks to reform the EUsbyzantineCommon Agricultural Policy.

The impasse, said Soil Associations Christopher Atkinson, came down to incompatible definitions of organic.Its like trying to reach a compromise between deciding whether you drive on the left-hand side of the road or the right-hand side of the road, he said.

Many blameHusling for the gridlock, with several sources saying his inexperience and strong convictions have tried patience and slowed progress to a halt.

I have never been involved in anything as shambolic Julie Girling, Conservative MEP

Its very bad form as a fellow MEP to criticize him, but I find it quite hard not to, said Julie Girling, a Conservative MEP and one of Huslings so-called shadows from another parliamentary group, who is now calling for the reform to be scrapped. I have never been involved in anything as shambolic.

Tim Heddema, a Dutch diplomat who participated in the talks, saidHusling was woefully underprepared forthe largely technical talks. He added that Husling is notoriously difficult to meet in person, which contributes to the huge delays.

When Heddemadid manage to sitdown withHuslings team,Heddema said that they wouldwaste time with philosophical discussions about the nature of organic food rather than delving into nitty-gritty legislative details but then turn around and challengeminor pointsduring the talks.

Parliament made every detail political, he said. There wasnt much love lost.

Husling pushed backat suggestions that he was lax about putting innegotiating legwork, though he allowed thattime constraints and fewer staff at the European Parliament made it impossibleto meet everyone.

Othersources who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity said everyone was exhausted and fed up with the file. Anothersaid thatHusling and his small staff worked ridiculous hours on the dossier.

All the negotiators, including Husling, areadamant that they do want to arrive at a solution, however unlikely one is. But increasingly, industry veterans and policymakers say the organic talks will slide into oblivion, leaving existing rules that open organics to fraud in place.

Jakob Hanke contributed reporting.

Link:

The German Green who fights to keep pesticides in your organic food - POLITICO.eu