In the past fiscal year, we were once again able to successfully advocate for sustainable organic agriculture and a dignified, healthy life for farmers.
This daily work is only possible thanks to your great support. The impressive story of the health bus in India shows the impact your donations have.
We look forward to being able to count on your support again next year.
Thank you very much!
Nicola Roten
Managing Director
The right to work is closely associated with up-to-date and sustainable development co-operation. The trading of goods with producers in the countries of the South is not only about fair prices and long-term purchasing commitments.
In its resolution dated 17 December 2018, the United Nations clearly states that smallholders must be given the opportunity to form producers’ associations. Further training and collective bargaining are the only ways for farmers to defend their interests and to make use of participation effectively.
The objective is to avoid dependencies and to give human beings the freedom to shape their lives in a sustainable manner, free from financial distress, with self-determination and on their own responsibility, enabling their children to have a good future.
This is one of the objectives the bioRe Foundation has been working towards for 25 years. While progress has been achieved, external drivers regularly create new challenges for us. It has always been our ambition to co-operate with our partners on an equal footing, and to plan and implement our social and agricultural sponsorship projects together with the people in India and Tanzania.
I am resigning as the Chairman of the Foundation at the end of the 21/22 financial year.
After 19 years of service on the bioRe Board of Trustees and 10 years in its chair, I look back on an eventful and very valuable period of time.
I would like to thank Patrick Hohmann for his work as a pioneer, and Coop and Remei both of which have taken on a large amount of responsibility over 25 years. A big thank-you goes to all those who have supported and will continue to support the Foundation as donors, partners, employees, or trustees.
The bioRe Foundation builds on a solid foundation. I wish it all the best in continuing to fulfil its purpose to enable the smallholder families to lead sustainable lives in self-determination and dignity.
Yours truly, Jürg Peritz
Chairman of the bioRe Foundation
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was enacted at the AGM of the UN. The right to health is described as follows:
Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.[…]» (claiminghumanrights.org)
In Switzerland, we have a highly developed health system and a broad social security net. In the countries of the global South however, basic needs, such as healthy water, hygiene and medical care are still unavailable.
The lettering in the bioRe® Foundation logo reads: “Human Rights Organic Cotton”. We directly connect human rights with organic cotton farming. Because organic farming without the use of agrochemicals will bring health benefits to the farmer families while working on the fields. And through numerous social bioRe projects, we promote a dignified life for the organic farmer families in India and Tanzania.
We often take our own health for granted and pay too little attention on a good balance of our resources. Each year we see the consequences of exploitation of natural resources more clearly. The earth has a fever, its temperature is steadily rising. Nevertheless, humans depend on a healthy environment, because without it there will be no future.
We at bioRe Foundation, in collaboration with Remei, assume ecological, social and economic responsibility through organic farming. Further we commit ourselves to fairness and sustainability along the entire value chain through our bioRe standards.
I thank you for your support of the bioRe promotion projects and wish you a future in good health.
Jürg Peritz, President od the bioRe® Foundation
Detailed annual statement upon request.
Project size
Ecology and agriculture: 34% (CHF 219,981)
Total: CHF 641,838
Project size organic farming
Total: CHF 219,981
The right to education is for me personally one of the most important human rights. Without education, children are exposed to exploitation and abuse. Education is the future. Education fights poverty. School lays – and maybe this is as important as the content of the lessons – the foundation for a happy childhood with friendships and a daily routine.
Until today, there are about 120 million children in the world that do not visit school. How can they develop their personality and potential? Where should they get to know their rights – the human rights? Freedom without discrimination, the right to work, freedom of expression, all these fundamentally important rights can only be transmitted through the access to schools.
My most beautiful memories of the journeys to India are the visits to the children in the bioRe® schools. The shining eyes of the children, the happiness and the discipline, the simplicity and the commitment of the teachers have always moved me and inspired me to give the subject of education a high priority in our Foundation.
hope to be able to continue to count on your support and thank you very much for your personal interest in the bioRe® Foundation and our projects in India and Tanzania.
Jürg Peritz, president of the bioRe® Foundation
Annual financial statement upon request
Over billions of years, an immeasurable diversity of life has developed. Unfortunately, this diversity in habitats is being reduced every day. Of an estimated 8 million species worldwide, up to one million are endangered. Many influences from us humans are reducing this habitat and species diversity. However, biodiversity is paramount to human life, health and natural communities.
The diverse wildlife and our wonderful earth are suffering from such a stressed environment. The consequences are tangible.
By promoting organic agriculture, we support biodiversity, intact habitats and our ecosystem, thanks to your help.
Jürg Peritz, President of the bioRe® Foundation
Annual financial statement upon request
Four multinational companies will dominate the business of seeds, pesticides and fertilizers in the future. Since 2015 there have been important mergers, recently Bayer has bought Monsanto for approximately 60 billion dollars, Syngenta was taken over by the governmental company Chemchina for 43 billion dollars, the huge American agrochemical Corteva has united Dupont and Dow Chemical, and BASF took over the whole pesticide business from Bayer. It is a dangerous concentration of power.
Their statement: „We want to feed the growing world population, defeat hunger, improve agriculture and support the farmers around the globe“ is quite diametrical to reality, it sounds cynical. Their business model to dominate the business with seeds and agrochemistry is deviant.
In reality it is their aim to determine, what the farmers grow. And how. And from whom. And for what cost. And all that with the first priority to gain billions.
They do not care about the catastrophic consequences for biodiversity, for people’s health, for our nature and environment, for animals and especially for farmers.
In the cotton sector the multinationals have already reached monopoly with genetically modified seeds and reached a share of over 95% in India for example. Farmers pay high prices for the genetically modified seeds with the corresponding pesticides and still suffer from bad harvests, because the monoculture destroys the soils, a lot of chemicas are used, beneficial organisms get eliminated while pests adapt and survive. A dead end.
With our foundation we foster the organic agriculture, which represents a balance between humans, animals and nature. Our seed research for organic seeds in India is developing very positively and this is how we will give our farmers the opportunity, to stay away from the power of the agrochemical industry and to develop a livelihood, which is in harmony with nature.
I wish you an inspiring reading of the annual report of the bioRe® Foundation and thank you for your kind support.
Yours sincerely
Jürg Peritz, president of the bioRe® Foundation
bioRe® Foundation is celebrating 20 years of promoting organic cotton farming in India and Tanzania – with many ups and downs along the way, we are very proud to see so many of the first registered farmers still working with bioRe® today. Such a long-term collaboration is most valuable when it comes to organic agriculture. Soils need time to build up sufficient humus, and production systems have to balance the different forces in nature. Amazing adoption rates are seen in Tanzania, and in India we see great results coming out of our long-term non-GM cotton seed research in the fight against GM-cotton.
It is with a lot of gratitude to our donors, farmers, team members and stakeholders of bioRe® organisations that we can look back at 20 years of taking up the great challenge to produce organic cotton, to integrate rotational crops to build up crop diversity and to truly come up with alternative way of agricultural production. However, many new developments in the biotechnology or external factors such as climate change are affecting organic cotton production.
bioRe® Foundation is supporting a biodynamic agriculture to strengthen the natural cycles on the organic farms – to create a healthy social organism. Besides the agricultural production and research projects, the bioRe® Foundation has also supported specific social projects in the past year. Our school programmes in India provided access to basic education for deprived children. The health-, water- and toilet projects supported the health of farmer family members. We focus on the human rights-based development approach to address the core problems of the farming communities and by strengthening effective participation to respect and fulfil the human rights.
I thank you all, dear donors, for your interest and long-standing support. Thank you very much for your ongoing support and commitment to the work of bioRe® Foundation.
Cordially
Christa Suter, CEO bioRe® Foundation
