PART I: SHORT HISTORY OF ORGANIC FARMING

The organic fruit production in Europe isnot only a matter of statistics, regulations and tables but also has a meaningful historical background. So as an introduction, we can take a brief excursion back to the roots and the evo-lution of organic farming. (The following text is closely—but not entirely—based on an overview article of Gunter Vogt, 2000a.) Organic farming’s origins in the first decades of the 20th century need to be understood in the context of five main aspects: 1. Since the end of the 19th century the “Life Reform Movement ” (in German =Lebensreform-Bewegung) existed disap-proving industrialization, urbanization and mechanization of the modern world. They called for a “natural way of living” including vegetarian nutrition, physical training, natural medicine and “back-to-the-country ” movement. 1. During the first and second world war there was a state of crisis in agriculture and agricultural science due to a dramat-ic loss of yield level (in spite of increased use of mineral fertilizer). Farm business suffered from economic problems with indebtedness, compulsory auctions and a decline of rural tradition and lifestyle. Furthermore, ecological problems ap-peared that had not been seen earlier such as breakdown of soil structure and soil fertility, decline of seed quality, increasing problems of plant diseases and pest in-festations and, finally, diminished food quality as a consequence of the intensified nitrogen fertilization. 2. In the early 1900s a new agricultural dis-cipline appeared: the biologically orient-ed agricultural sciences discovering, for example, nitrogen fixing bacteria