On behalf of the Organic Exchange Farm Development Programme, I would like to extend our best wishes and hopes for all Organic Cotton Producers in 2009. I have no doubt that in the gloomy economic times this will be a year of many challenges, but I am also hopeful we will make progress and use this year to consolidate our sector and be prepared for more growth in the future.

We have much on our agenda for the coming year. We have three Regional Meetings coming up, in India, Peru and Egypt (see main page for more details), and we will be working on another Farm and Fibre Report this year.

We will also be continuing or developing work in three core areas. We will be promoting our Key Performance Indicators allowing farmers and producer groups to assess and report on their progress and goals, and developing work on sustainable pricing in organic cotton and research components for a Guide on responsible trade in organic cotton production. More on these later as we contact you all to help us with this research.

We will also continue work on farm system crops and their potential markets, and will launch a report on these this year.

Please send us stories and information as well we can include in this blog.

Below, I have included a revised farm programme mission statement to give you an idea of our current priorities.

Mission

Our mission is to catalyse growth in sustainable organic cotton production. This means growth that is based on economic fairness and returns, transparency in the supply chain, promotion of the best practice business models, ensuring ethical conduct and good relations between farmers and the value chain – as well as environmental sustainability. Promoting growth without promoting best practice could result in a business model lacking long term environmental health and economic fairness.

Values

The FDP believes in a new kind of value chain where farmers are more than commodity producers, receive a fair share of the value of the final product and are able to participate in decisions that affect their lives, where they gain access to opportunities to improve their businesses, communities and environment and are secure to be resilient in the face of the challenges and opportunities they will face as they grow.