Ecology & Agriculture Foundation

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Ecology & Agriculture Foundation
Soel logo.gif
Legal form: Public foundation under civil law
Purpose: statute
Chair: Peter Kieffer
Managing directors: Dr. Uli Zerger
Consist: 1975/1991
Founder: Karl Werner Kieffer
Seat: Bad Dürkheim
Website: www.soel.de

The Ecology & Agriculture Foundation (SÖL) is a non-profit foundation based in Bad Dürkheim , whose aim is to promote agriculture that uses natural resources sparingly and practices animal welfare . The purpose of the statutes is to promote education and health, especially in the areas of ecology and agriculture . Therefore, the foundation is committed to the further development of organic farming . The focus of work is the coordination of the actors as well as the development and dissemination of information to decision-makers in science, practice and advice. The focus of the foundation's work is currently in the German-speaking area.

history

Seat of the SÖL

In 1961, Karl Werner Kieffer (1912–1995), then chairman of the board of the sewing machine factory GM Pfaff AG in Kaiserslautern, founded a foundation that he named in memory of the company's founder, the Georg Michael Pfaff Memorial Foundation . This foundation was primarily involved in the areas of education and health, especially in the Kaiserslautern region. The establishment of the University of Kaiserslautern can be traced back to the foundation's activities. She founded a group of friends who were committed to founding the university. The founder was supported by his wife Dagi Kieffer (* 1925).

In the course of the foundation's work, topics from agriculture as well as nature and humane technologies emerged. In order to work on these topics more intensively and inspired by a lecture by EF Schumacher , Karl Werner Kieffer founded two further foundations in 1975: the Foundation for Medium-sized Technology and the Foundation for Organic Farming . In the Middle Technology Foundation , discussions about higher energy and raw material efficiency or a reduction in environmental pollution were initiated. The work of the Organic Farming Foundation manifested itself in numerous publications in the 1970s and 1980s. Ecological topics were made accessible to a broad public. The foundation established the first series of books on topics relating to environmental protection and organic farming. In 1977 guidelines for organic viticulture were developed, the results of which appeared in a book a year later. In 1982 the foundation was the first institution to address the issue of forest dieback . Organic farming was defined for the first time in 1984 in the framework guidelines for organic farming published by the foundation . The focus of the now three foundations, which now exist side by side, is the focus of the late 1980s on topics related to ecological agriculture.

One consequence of this development was to merge these three foundations in 1991 to form the Ecology & Agriculture Foundation .

In memory of its founder, the SÖL has been awarding the Karl Werner Kieffer Prize since 1996.

Focus of work

information

The foundation wants to provide well-founded information about organic farming in print and electronic media. Target groups are in particular multipliers and experts such as B. agricultural advisors.

The SÖL provides information on current developments in the organic sector and provides background information on organic farming via the Internet and with the specialist journal Ökologie & Landbau , which has been published quarterly since 1977 . The book series Praxis des Ökolandbau , which is published together with the bioland publishing house, provides detailed knowledge of individual areas of organic farming. The foundation's own library at the Bad Dürkheim location contains media from the early 1960s. It has more than 10,000 books and documents. In discussion rounds on topics such as rural agriculture, healthy nutrition or future prospects for organic farming, the SÖL brings players in the organic sector to one table with decision-makers and multipliers and thus promotes the exchange of opinions and information.

education

The foundation offers professional training and further education for various target groups. Consultants, farmers, scientists and other interested parties can each take part in training courses with different focuses. A comparatively new seminar offering is farm education. Farmers are taught how an educationally appealing program can be designed on their farm for children from kindergartens and schools. Schoolchildren should acquire sustainable knowledge about the production and processing of food on the foundation's own school and seminar farm Gut Hohenberg near Annweiler through their own cultivation.

School and seminar farm Gut Hohenberg

Seminars on agriculture and nutrition are offered to interested adults. University graduates can train to become specialists and managers for the organic sector. They are trained in a one-year trainee program in cooperation with private companies under the direction of the SÖL. The trainee program is funded by the Federal Organic Farming Program and other forms of sustainable agriculture .

research

The SÖL carries out research projects in cooperation with partners. In order to give organic farming impulses for further development, the aim is to implement the research results in agricultural practice. For example, the biannual scientific conference on organic farming serves this purpose, offering scientists and practitioners a forum for dialogue. Research results are presented and discussed with farmers and consultants. The Association for Ecological Practice Research (V.Ö.P.), which SÖL was involved in establishing in 2010, is intensifying this exchange.

The following research projects were carried out by the SÖL:

  • In viticulture , pioneering work was carried out with a study on ecological vineyards.
  • In the project Ecological tillage (POEB) was a ten-year long-term study conducted (1994-2004). Variants of shallow or non -turning soil cultivation and turning cultivation with a plow were compared with one another.
  • In the consultant-practice network , nationwide working groups for branch accounts and overall company comparisons in organic farming have been initiated. Uniform standards for determining full costs were created in the national network of consultants.
  • In the cross-border research project BioRhi'n: Farm comparison on the Upper Rhine , the economic situation was recorded in 73 organic farms and analyzed in farm comparisons.
  • In the Soil Fertility in Organic Farming project, increases in yields were examined from 2008 to 2013 while simultaneously taking account of soil ecological and environmentally relevant properties.

Networking

With its independent status, the foundation wants to promote the bundling of the interests of various players in the organic sector. The motivation is to create synergies and thus to give impetus to organic farming. The foundation has played a key role in or is involved in the following associations:

  • The International Association of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), founded in 1972, enables the interests of organic farming associations, companies in the organic food industry and research institutions from different countries to be coordinated .
  • The interests of the individual organic farming associations were coordinated in cooperation with the SÖL in the organic umbrella association Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ökologischer Landbau (AGÖL), which was founded in 1988 . After AGÖL was dissolved in 2002, SÖL helped found a successor organization: since 2003, the Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft (BÖLW) has united the stages from production to processing of organic food and is a leading association in the organic sector.
  • In the network demonstration farms for organic farming , farmers have been opening their farms since 2002, especially for consumers, but also for interested professional colleagues. The foundation has been responsible for coordinating the events for many years.
  • In the Association for Ecological Practice Research (V.Ö.P.), founded in 2010, a regular exchange of scientists and practitioners in organic farming is institutionalized. Research-relevant questions are worked out jointly by actors from consulting and practice.
  • In the federal working group Lernort Bauernhof (BAGLoB) further training and networking of the farm education actors take place.

Structures

The foundation is non-profit , independent and science-promoting. The head office is in Bad Dürkheim. Another location is the school and seminar farm Gut Hohenberg in the southern Palatinate. The foundation's bodies are the board of directors and the foundation board. The board consists of three executive members: Peter Kieffer (chairman), Ulrich Hampl and Uli Zerger. The SÖL works primarily as an operational foundation. In order to work on joint projects and services for the organic food industry, FiBL-Projekte GmbH was founded together with FiBL Germany .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Statutes of the Ecology & Agriculture Foundation
  2. ↑ Olbrich-Majer, M. (2012): 50 Years of the Ecology and Agriculture Foundation. Lebendige Erde 1/2012, p. 49
  3. ↑ Gehr, E .; Zerger, U .; Eder, J .: Ecological Vine Planting - Ways to Production and Distribution. Final report at " http://orgprints.org/17320/ "
  4. ↑ Hampl, U. (2004): Project ecological soil cultivation. Final report
  5. ↑ Löser, R .; Weitbrecht, B .; Zerger, U. (2007): Establishment of a nationwide network of practical consultants for the exchange of knowledge and method comparison for the areas of branch comparison (BV) and branch accounting (BZA). SÖL, Bad Dürkheim
  6. ↑ Interreg: Comparison of companies on the Upper Rhine. (No longer available online.) November 22, 2011, archived from the original on December 27, 2011 ; accessed on September 6, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Former homepage “BoFru”: www.bodenfruchtbarkeit.org. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 12, 2017 ; accessed on March 15, 2020 .
  8. ↑ FIBL Soil Fertility Project. Increasing the added value of organically grown market crops by optimizing the management of soil fertility. Retrieved September 6, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Ecology & Agriculture: Focus 50 Years of SÖL. Trade journal issue 1/2012
  10. ↑ Ecology & Agriculture Foundation (ed.): Living from healthy earth, 2011
  11. ↑ FiBL Projects GmbH. FIBL;