“I am convinced that the era of industrial farming will be seen as a blip, a wrong turn,” said Lord Peter Melchett, speaking to hundreds of food industry officials at the City Food Lecture 2007 in London, organised by the Food Standards Agency. His comments sparked a lively debate about the future of food supplies, and particularly whether the organic food movement was the right tool to lead the industry forward.

“We are at the beginning of major changes in our food culture,” said Lord Melchett, putting forward the case for mass conversion to organic production methods.

He fired a volley of statistics at the crowd, including that Tesco's organic food sales grew more than 30 per cent last year and that a third of farmers surveyed said they would consider switching to organic.

Organic methods, he said, could help solve some of the major challenges we face on climate change because they produced less carbon emissions. “Climate change is one of the biggest threats to our health as a species.”

Source: Food Quality News