Organic means
System change

In the beginning, organic was still a theoretical construct that had to be fed with living stories to get people excited about it. There were only a few who took organic as a common path. Today, organic is THE way for people to feed themselves in the future. For me, there is no alternative. However, organic must continue to develop and become synonymous with sustainable agriculture and food production.

Werner Lampert has been committed to organic food production for over 30 years and is the initiator and supporter of numerous regional agricultural projects in Austria. In nature, which fascinates him more than anything else, he defends the necessity of comprehensive regional organic farming and ascribes great social responsibility to it.

What does sustainability mean to you?

Sustainability has become a buzzword everywhere, be it for tractor manufacturers or in the speculative business. It is the only way we humans still have a future on this planet. Agriculture is about working in cooperation with nature and not fighting it like an enemy.

Keyword: social and economic sustainability. Treating each other properly and doing business sensibly are also part of this. For example, running a family business in such a way that the children want to continue it with enthusiasm.

What is organic worth to us?

Life. We have to ask ourselves "Can we as humans continue to live like this, deal with food, continue to practice this animal husbandry and exploit the planet?". Organic stands for a system change that does not end with agriculture.

What needs to be criticized about organic?

Many things. Organic has always been a good alternative to conventional farming. It began at the turn of the century when Rudolf Steiner founded biodynamic agriculture as an idea for the future and for life. Later, the focus shifted to organic farming.
In the 1980s and 1990s, more and more farmers and agricultural businesses adopted organic farming as an economic idea. Of course, a lot of content was lost in the process. But by combining organic with sustainability, we can find our way back to the original 'substantial' organic.

Keyword: Food sovereignty in times of multiple crises. How can we achieve this?

The war in Ukraine and climate change make it clear: we need an agriculture that feeds people in their region. Food sovereignty means that people, where they live, have a say in how their food is produced and processed and how they want to feed themselves. We are currently in the midst of a beacon for regional, sustainable organic agriculture.

Food is becoming more and more expensive. Until now, industrialized agriculture has produced masses of food 'come hell or high water' regardless of losses. The damage it causes has to be paid for by the general public.

BSE is a good example. Cattle, with their ingenious four-part stomachs, have fed exclusively on plants for millions of years. Then man, in his greed for profit, began to feed them more 'effectively', with animal meal. The result was that cattle literally went mad. Hundreds of thousands of animals had to be killed and disposed of. This scandal cost billions. It was paid for by the general public, not the people who caused it.

Overall, sustainably produced food would be cheaper if the ecological and social follow-up costs were added to our food prices (keyword: true-cost accounting).

Magazine

True-Costs-
True cost of goods

Environmental and social damage caused by food production ...

Independence of our food system versus independence of our energy system - which is more important?

Germany, whose entire energy supply was dependent on just one country just a year ago, is now saying that the country has no future with gas, whether from Russia, the Middle East or the USA. Germany needs a self-sufficient energy supply.

But food is even more important than energy. Without it, there would be no life on this earth. However, we are not yet talking about self-sufficiency. We still buy food where it is cheapest and ship it to Europe.

Self-sufficient food production means that we have to treat nature in a far more resource-conserving way than industrialized agriculture does. The EU currently needs an additional agricultural area outside Europe that is as large as Germany for factory farming alone. In Brazil, the Amazon, our green lung, is being burned down so that we can feed our livestock.

Is the Ukraine war being instrumentalized?

As soon as the shots were fired in Ukraine, the tender seedlings for more sustainable agriculture planted by the EU Commission were immediately trampled underfoot again.

The agricultural lobby is of the opinion that we have to produce 'fully' in order to be able to feed people. Instead, it should finally acknowledge the massive damage caused by industrialized agriculture. I consider the 'capitalization' of agriculture to be one of the greatest sins, because it endangers food security for future generations. Food and housing simply have no place on the capital market.

The word responsibility is hardly ever discussed in agriculture. Nowhere would it have more room than there. This is incomprehensible, given that the representatives of the agricultural lobby also have children and grandchildren.

The ethics of responsibility means that we need an accurate picture of what we are doing and the consequences of our actions. With this attitude, we would make the step towards a sustainable and self-sufficient food system that guarantees high-quality nutrition. The energy crisis will teach us that this must be the next step.

What does ideal farming look like for you?

Organic farming, which is increasingly moving towards regenerative agriculture that can store carbon again instead of emitting it. This means more humus formation, sustainable forestry and the renaturation of moors.

If agriculture and forestry were to build up 0.4 percent humus in their soils every year, these areas could theoretically absorb the amount of CO2 that currently ends up in the atmosphere every year(4 per mille initiative of the UN Climate Change Conference 2015). Peatlands act as important carbon reservoirs. In the last 80-90 years, almost all peatlands have been drained and made usable for agriculture. We need to reverse this.

Listening to you, building up humus, renaturation, these are not incredibly difficult undertakings. Why isn't it done if it would have such great effects?

We would have to say goodbye to the current agricultural system, take responsibility and work in a way that conserves resources. This is not an easy undertaking. Farmers need to rethink, agricultural schools need to teach in a completely different way, etc. A lot of capital is being made from current agriculture. The many billions for the chemical industry, for example, would be lost. The interest in 'business as usual' is correspondingly great.

Does digital agriculture have a future?

The problems in agriculture have also arisen because people have increasingly broken their relationship with nature. If you ask people who have an intact relationship with their natural environment why we are actually destroying everything, they will answer: our relationship with nature has broken down.

Thinking about using even more technology that takes people even further away from nature is the wrong way to go.

Digitalization is quite tempting, but another "How can current agriculture be saved without changing anything?" It means total dependence on the industry. Farmers are now just unskilled laborers who are no longer good for anything else. This does not bring food security.

What can consumers still trust?

As a consumer, you are in a very simple situation. Even if not everything is good with organic food and a lot still needs to change and improve, you are always on the right side with organic food.

Back to the beginning: What has changed since you started half a century ago?

Even as a 10-year-old boy, I had a vegetable garden, berry bushes and fruit trees that I was solely responsible for. I was fascinated by the fact that I didn't have to use any artificial fertilizers or pesticides and still had wonderful harvests.

As a result, I developed a basic trust in nature and in living in harmony with nature. Biodynamic agriculture and its understanding of the connections and networks that nature creates have been with me for a very long time.

As a young man, I naturally thought that this fascination would be shared by everyone else. Unfortunately, that didn't happen; probably 50 percent of people still don't know what organic means.

So we still have a big task ahead of us. Organic is no longer an idea that farmers work with, but has the obligation to take all possible steps and paths to feed humanity in the future. Conventional agriculture will not be able to do this.

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Werner Lampert

(*1946 in Vorarlberg/Austria, † 2025) is one of the pioneers in the field of sustainable products and their development in Europe. The organic pioneer has been intensively involved in organic farming since the 1970s. With Back to the origin (Hofer) and Ja! Natürlich, he developed two of the most successful organic brands in the German-speaking world.

Werner Lampert