According to agricultural minister Romain Schneider (LSAP), the goal will be to adjust premiums, and boost investment aid to make it more advantageous financially for farms to convert and continue using organic practices.
Currently, organic farming practices are used on 5% of the country’s agricultural land. The goal of the government’s organic farming action plan will be to increase this proportion to 20% by 2025.
The remaining 80% should be operated according to sustainable criteria in economic, ecological and social terms, the minister said on Friday when he presented the plan to a parliamentary committee.
Under the plan, state budgets will gradually increase, starting at €3.5m for 2020 and rising to €11.4m for 2025.
To gain consumer support for organic produce, the plan outlines a target which would ensure that two-fifths of products sold in state-subsidised collective catering facilities (for example, in schools and crèches) are organic, and three-fifths from farms in the process of converting to organic practices.
There are also plans to develop an organic product certification label for Luxembourg produce and a new concept for demonstrative farms, which showcase organic farming practices.
Push for more ambitious targets
The plan was first announced in 2019 when a handful of MPs tabled a motion for a more ambitious target of 100% of farmland given over to organic practices by 2050.
Switching the country’s entire farming sector to organic methods was also a proposal outlined in the Rifkin report, a sustainable roadmap commissioned by Luxembourg from economist Jeremy Rifkin.