Contesting 'Sustainable Intensification' in the UK: The Emerging Organic Discourse

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the organic movement is entering into a new phase of activity and that to understand these changes scholarly accounts need to be cognisant of it as a social movement and sensitive to socio-spatial differences within the movement (Reed 2010). By considering how the movement’s organisations have discussed and contested attempts to intensify British agriculture this paper examines new permutations in the discourse of organic agriculture. This new permutation has developed in opposition to, and in tension with, the drive to ‘sustainably intensify’ British agriculture. Broadly the British state, with support from networks of scientists and corporations, has been attempting to frame the future of the food system as being reliant on a raft of new technologies, which are being resisted by a range of NGOs and social movements