Four trustees of the Soil Association have resigned from its council board with a stinging blast over how the organisation is run.

Campaigning food journalist Joanna Blythman, food writer Lynda Brown, author and former editor of The Ecologist Pat Thomas and organic baker, author and founder of the UKs Real Bread Campaign Andrew Whitley stood down after criticising the associations approach to promoting organic food and farming.

The four singled out the Soil Associations strategy, Road to 2020, and its effect on the associations profile as the main reason for their resignation.

They saidthe strategys implementation wasas a major factor in the demise of organic awareness and general confusion around what the association stands for, and what it does.

See also: Organic farming on the rise in Europe, says EU

The four ex-trustees highlighted seven areas of criticism, which they believe the strategy is promoting:

The four accused the Soil Association of avoiding the use of the word organic in preference to nature-friendly and planet-friendly substitutes.

They claimed the association, which has 17 trustees on its council board, had shifted its focus to position itself as a public health delivery organisation rather than the UKs main organic food and farming organisation.

They said the organisation was suffering from a PR void at senior management level and had lost its authoritative voice.

The Soil Association is no longer the go-to place for media on food and farming matters and lacks political clout on national farming matters, said the former trustees, in a blog.

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Four Soil Association trustees quit over organic strategy