Farmer Consumer Partnerships Communicating Ethical Values: a conceptual framework

The CORE-Organic Farmer Consumer Partnership project develops and tests innovative generic communication strategies as a valuable tool for the strategic positioning of organic companies and farmers' initiatives in the five partner countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK. The main objective is to determine how commitment to a broader range of ethical values than those covered by European organic regulations can be reflected in communication with customers. This report represents the outcome of the first two work packages (WPs 1 & 2). In WP 1, a conceptual framework for communicating ethical approaches in organic agriculture was developed. The most important ethical traditions frequently mentioned in the context of ethical consumerism and Corporate Social Responsibility was reviewed. It was established which of the concerns expressed by organic stakeholders go beyond current organic standards, in particular the European Regulations. These concerns and the activities with which they are associated are referred to as ‘organicPlus’ in this report. In WP 2, in a two step empirical study, organicPlus approaches and ‘communication arguments’ of organic companies were identified by analysing written company material and qualitative interviews. The first step involved mapping 101 companies to develop a general understanding of the issues for organic SMEs. In a second step, the background of organicPlus approaches was explored in greater detail in 20 case study companies. Chapter 1 summarises the basic rationale for the project. OrganicPlus activities have the potential to differentiate organic products in a growing and increasingly globalised market, where organic products compete with other ethical choices such as local or regional foods and ‘Fairtrade’ products. In Chapter 2, the relevance of ethical consumerism, fair trade and ethical business management concepts, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), for the organic sector is explored. Chapter 3 uses stages of a tool-kit for food companies (Corporate Moral Responsibility Manual by Brom et al., 2006) to explore values expressed in literature about the organic sector and compares them with the European Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 and (EC) 834/2007 on organic production. Chapter 4 describes how organic companies in the five partner countries integrate organicPlus approaches in their activities. The final chapter brings together the findings from the two WPs and provides concluding remarks related to the organicPlus approach, the most promising communication arguments for further study and some general conclusions and recommendations.