Organic Field Day Presentation
Lamberton, Minnesota
July 8, 2010

By Roger Blobaum

I am here today representing The Ceres Trust, a national foundation that makes organic farming a priority. It is not appropriate for me, as a foundation representative, to talk about mobilizing political support for organic research.

But I can talk about the impact political action has had on organic research in the past and the persistent efforts of organic farmers and others to build support for organic research. I want to do that by telling the story of organic research in this country, a 40- year saga with lots of ups and downs.

The program for this University of Minnesota field day shows how far organic research has come over the last few years. Land grant universities were slow to accept organic farming as a serious or suitable research topic. And they were dismissive, even disrespectful, of organic farmers in the early years.

It is hard to imagine now how anybody could have been against organic research. But many did oppose it. Two critical reports, the first in 1978 focusing on land grant universities and the second in 1997 targeting USDA, illustrate how bad the organic research situation was in the beginning.

The first was a survey of more than 500 organic farmers in five Midwest states, including Minnesota, that identified lack of organic research as a significant barrier to adoption of organic methods. Many farmers wrote disparaging comments in the questionnaire margins about the lack of support from their land grant universities. And only six of the 214 respondents reported they knew of any organic research being done at their state university.

When asked to respond, the deans of agriculture at all five universities reported they did not know of any organic research being done at their institutions one with an attitude went further. We aren’t doing any organic research now, he wrote, and furthermore we aren’t going to be doing any.

The other discouraging report, which targeted USDA, came 20 years later. It was “Searching for the O Word,” a report of a 1997 Organic Farming Research Foundation study. OFRF’s search through the more than 30,000 agricultural research projects in USDA’s research portfolio showed only 34 that qualified as “strong organic.”

This organic field day illustrates the progress organic farmers and land grant university researchers have made in turning this around. “Searching for the O Word” was especially important as a turning point in building support in Congress for organic research and getting the situation turned around at USDA.

We now have a growing organic research community in the Midwest. It develops and disseminates new information that helps organic farmers become more productive and profitable. And information that helps conventional farmers transition to organic. The Ceres Trust is pleased to have the opportunity to help support this work.

We began compiling a researcher data base when we became involved in organic research grantmaking last year. Instead of the 100, or even 150, organic researchers we had expected to find in the North Central Region, we have identified more than 225 scientists, graduate students, and others engaged in organic research. The number would be much higher if all the organic farmers participating in organic research projects were included.

We also found more evidence of strength in the organic research community. We had no idea what the response would be when we announced we would provide $500,000 in research grants of up to $60,000 a year for three years. We were surprised and pleased when 26 organic research proposals arrived in the mail last September.

More surprising, nearly all were for quality projects proposed by organic research teams from land grant universities. Instead of funding eight or nine projects as planned initially, we responded to this large number of strong proposals by funding 13 for a total of $1.9 million. Two of these grants went to University of Minnesota researchers for work here at Lamberton. One is for high tunnel work and the other is for work on edible grain legumes for organic cropping systems.

We are repeating this competition in 2010 and the Request for Applications has been posted. Since these grants were made, we also have made grants of up to $10,000 to 10 graduate students, including two from the University of Minnesota, to support organic research projects. These, too, were high quality proposals and we plan to repeat this program as well.

Organic farming has been my main interest since 1972 when I began interviewing, photographing, surveying, researching, and writing about organic farmers in the Midwest. This has led to my recent interest in the history of organic research. The story of the evolution of organic research is one of the most interesting in the history of American agriculture. It is the topic of my presentation.

The story begins here in Southwest Minnesota. Organic research history was made a few miles from here in the early 1970s when several organic farmers set up the Minnesota Soil Association to raise money for organic research. Six months later they received a $3,500 research grant from a Minnesota state government agency.

It funded a study comparing tile line discharges on organic and conventional farms to determine whether nitrogen fertilizer applications were causing high nitrate levels in farm wells. Profs. Lester Schmid and Charles Reinert of Southwest Minnesota State at Marshall had been identified by organic farmers as scientists who shared their interest in organic research. They helped shape the project and conducted the research.

I believe this was the first government-funded organic research conducted anywhere in this country. I interviewed and photographed the farmers involved and wrote a story describing their achievement. It was published by the Rodale Press in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine, which had a circulation of 900,00, and republished later in the 1975 Organic Farming Yearbook of Agriculture.

Soil Association members believed farming organically could solve many of the problems they were seeing on Minnesota farms. Soil tests showed organic matter levels were dropping, for example, and farmers were reporting that the soil was getting harder and more difficult to work. Pigeon grass was becoming a serious problem and higher fertilizer applications did not produce expected higher yields. They believed organic research could provide some answers.

This early research had a much different focus than organic research today. Farmers wanted research that documented the economic viability of organic farming, identified and analyzed barriers to adoption of organic methods, examined the quality and quantity of feed grown on organically-managed land, addressed weed and soil health and similar problems, and challenged the conventional wisdom that organic farming was a throwback to the past.

Another early response to the growing farmer interest in organic research was a 1974 Center for Rural Affairs survey of 147 organic farmers in Nebraska that attempted to identify why they had switched to organic methods. The responses suggest some of the beliefs shared by organic farmers at that time.

Some of the farmer respondents reported their yields with organically-grown crops were better than the yields they had before switching to organic. With good yields and lower input costs, they reported, they were doing as well or better financially than their conventional neighbors.

Many reported that livestock preferred grain produced on organic farms, that livestock were healthier when fed hay and grain produced organically, that they seldom needed the services of a veterinarian, and that the feed value of grain produced on organic farms was superior.

Although organic farmers consistently reported they had comparable yields and did well financially, they received neither support nor respect from USDA or the agricultural establishment overall.

This changed with publication in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, of the results of a 3-year Washington University study funded by the National Science Foundation. The surprising conclusion was that farming organically was a viable economic alternative for commercial-size crop and livestock farms in the Midwest.

Data collected over three years from 14 matched pairs of conventional and organic farms showed that organic farms had somewhat lower crop sales per acre of cropland, that conventional farms had higher purchased input costs, that organic farms had somewhat higher labor requirements, and that farmers in both groups made about the same amount of money. An unexpected difference was that the conventional farmers used more than twice as much energy.

A followup Washington University survey of 300 organic farmers from Minnesota and four other Midwest states identified five important advantages of switching to organic farming. They were healthier for the farmer and his family, healthier for livestock, more in harmony with nature, better for the soil, and better for the environment.

Other studies and surveys helped lay the groundwork for a significant organic research development at the end of the 1970s. That was the request to a team of USDA scientists from Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, a Minnesota farmer before becoming involved in politics, to conduct a study of organic farming. Bergland had a neighbor who was a successful organic farmer and did not like the way organic farmers were disrespected at USDA.

The result was USDA’s 1980 Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming, which recommended development of the full range of research and education programs to address the problems and needs of organic farmers. The report was discussed at a series of public meetings on land grant university campuses. Politically it permanently changed the focus of the debate about organic research from the land grant universities, where some organic research had finally begun, to Washington and Congress and USDA.

More than 20,000 farmers requested copies of the 94-page report before its distribution was blocked a year later by the new Reagan Administration. In 1982 the full-time organic farming coordinator position that was recommended and established at USDA was abolished and an order to destroy all remaining copies of the report was issued.

Congressional followup to the 1980 report, including the proposed Organic Farming Act of 1982, met strong and consistent USDA opposition. Eventually a “low input agriculture” research program was authorized in the 1985 farm bill and implemented three years later as the LISA program. All references to organic farming were deleted, however, and the result was a competitive grants program that funded research and education on reduced-chemical practices.

The program was revamped in the 1990 farm bill and renamed the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Although the legislative language and the implementation guidelines of both the LISA and the SARE programs avoided any reference to organic farming, several projects with organic content were funded.

This was the first time any kind of USDA funding provided support for organic research. Only about 15 percent of SARE’s more than 3,000 research and education projects since have had an organic focus or organic content.

Another attempt to gain USDA support for organic research came in the bill proposing the Organic Foods Production Act in 1989. But USDA and agriculture industry opponents threatened to block all standard setting and other organic provisions in the bill unless the research provisions were dropped. So, 10 years after the 1980 USDA report, still another attempt to authorize a federal organic specific research initiative had failed.

The coalition of consumer, environmental, and other organizations that had supported the Organic Foods Production Act joined several organic and sustainable agriculture groups in continuing to press Congress in the early 1990s to authorize organic research funding. But no progress was made until the “Searching for the O Word” report was published in 1997.

The agriculture committees in Congress, with their perfect record of opposing organic research, took little notice of this embarrassing report and did nothing. But the Agricultural Research Service did respond.

It identified 188 of its more than 2,000 staff scientists who stated an interest in organic research and surveyed them about barriers to doing this kind of research. The barriers identified included lack of an agency commitment to organic research, lack of certified land needed for replicated experimental plots, and difficulty working with organic farmers on cooperative on-farm projects.

Organic farming advocates through the 1990s were not satisfied with the small number of organic projects slipped into SARE, ARS, and other existing USDA research programs. They wanted more. The first positive response was authorization in 1998 of an Organic Transition initiative. It was included in a much larger USDA competitive grants program and was funded three years later. You can see there was no sense of urgency here.

Finally in 2002, five years after OFRF’s “Searching for the O Word” report and almost 30 years after Minnesota organic farmers got their first organic research grant from a state agency, Congress passed legislation providing funding specifically for organic research. The new Organic Agriculture Research and Education Initiative mandated an appropriation of $3 million per year for five years for competitive research grants.

Congress revisited OREI in the latest farm bill and extended it for another five years with mandatory funding of $15 million per year. The OREI program, among other things, provides support for development of new and improved seed varieties particularly suited for organic farming.

Gains made for organic research in the last farm bill are significant. But funding for research, as well as extension and other organic programs, falls far short of the high level of support in Europe that has enabled many countries there to set official organic sector goals as high as 10 to 15 percent.

With all the talk of cutting the deficit, is it likely Congress will continue to provide organic research funding? The House Agriculture Committee and organizations like the National Organic Coalition, OFRF, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Organic Trade Association have already started work on the next farm bill.

But it’s far too early to predict what Congress or the Administration might try to do. As a foundation representative, I am not here to make any political predictions. But I would like to share my own personal reading of the situation. I am convinced organic research supporters will have to fight hard to maintain the current level of organic research funding.

There are two encouraging notes. One is the fact that Mark Lipson, author of OFRF’s “O Word” report, is the new organic farming coordinator at USDA. Lipson worked closely for years with organic research supporters in Congress and within USDA and would appear to be in a position to try to block attempts to cut organic research funding.

The other encouraging note is USDA’s positive response to the National Organic Action Plan, which includes a strong organic research section and calls for fair share targets for organic research. That means budgets for organic research would have to be at least proportional to the percentage of food marketed that is organic. The plan also calls for an organic farmers research network and development of organic research plans for several USDA agencies.

For those of you involved in organic research, or farming organically, it is not too early to start paying attention to developments shaping organic provisions in the next farm bill. I would urge you to tune in now, to stay tuned, to be aware that organic programs are always vulnerable, and to help make sure the current level of federal funding for organic research is maintained.

Atina Diffley, Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works

I blurbed this one, with much pleasure: “Turn Here Sweet Corn is an unexpected page-turner. Atina Diffley’s compelling account of her life as a Minnesota organic farmer is deeply moving not only from a personal standpoint but also from the political. Diffley reveals the evident difficulties of small-scale organic farming but is inspirational about its value to people and the planet.” The book comes with an insert of glorious photographs illustrating the history she recounts. The political? The Diffley’s fought to keep an oil company from running a pipeline through their property — and won. Marion Nestle

University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

__________

Cultivating a Movement: An Oral History Series on Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming on California’s Central Coast

Project conducted by the Regional Oral History Project at the University of California Santa Cruz’s University Library. Publication: September 21, 2011

__________

Who These Early Organic Farmers Were, The Barriers They Had to Overcome, and How They Built the Movement Together.

A workshop at the 2011 MOSES Organic Farming Conference by Roger Blobaum

“When I was invited to present a workshop on the history of organic farming, the workshop coordinator and I agreed that the history was too large a topic to cover in one workshop session.  The result was a presentation limited to the history of organic farming in the Midwest in the 1970s.” — Roger Blobaum

Focus on the 1970s: 1) It was a period when farmers in the Midwest made real progress in working together and in shaping and expanding the organic farming sector and 2) It was a period when I had the opportunity to be involved as a writer, a photographer, a researcher, and an advocate.

This presentation reflects my own intense interest in organic agriculture, the friendship of organic farmers who provided lots of inspiration and information as I wrote about their concerns and their successes, and my strong interest in identifying and dealing with the barriers organic farmers had to overcome.

Important in this period was the way organic farmers and consumers cooperated in developing standards and establishing third-party certification.

I came across organic farming by chance.

At a board meeting of Iowans for  Environmental Quality in 1971, a colleague announced that he planned to visit an organic farm after the meeting and wondered if anyone wanted to go along.  Although I had covered farm stories as a reporter and had worked on the bill to ban DDT and other farm and environmental bills as a Congressional staffer, the term “organic farming” was entirely new to me.  I decided I needed to find out what this was all about.

Clarence Van Sant’s Diversified Organic Farm in Central Iowa

We arrived at Clarence Van Sant’s farm near Grinnell late on a sunny September afternoon.  It looked like a typical Iowa farm when we drove in.  After greeting us, Clarence picked up a shovel and led us out to the edge of a corn field.  He stopped, turned over a few shovels of rich black soil, and watched our reaction as dozens of earthworms came tumbling out.  I knew immediately this was something special.

We continued to be impressed as we walked past a field of weed-free soybeans, crossed timothy and red clover hay ground that was part of his crop rotation, and admired his beautiful Charolais cattle.

Clarence told us there were quite a few organic farmers in the Midwest, that they had livestock and rotated their crops, and that they were doing well. He said most raised all of their own feed, many purchased organic fertilizers and soil conditioners, and some were selling direct to consumers.

We asked where farmers got their organic farming information.  The most important source, he said, was other organic farmers.  He said some information was available from small companies selling organic fertilizer and other inputs.  He also cited the Rodale Press and its national magazine, Organic Gardening and Farming.

He didn’t have anything good to say about USDA or land grant universities or Extension.  He said they were biased, looked down on organic farmers, ignored their need for research, and refused to acknowledge their accomplishments.

I was so moved by this experience that I drove to Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and paid the Rodale Press a visit.  The editors of Organic Gardening and Farming magazine proudly reported the circulation of the magazine had reached 800,000, that they had published a national organic directory, and that they were promoting organic farming around the country.  They estimated there were at least 10,000 organic farmers nationwide.

The national organic directory, published in 1971, provided the only systematic overview of the organic farming community available at that time.  It included a national listing of more than 1,600 growers, distributors, health food stores, and other sources of organic food.  It also included listings for more than 500 ecology action groups, more than 200 sources of natural fertilizers, soil conditions, and mulching materials, and more than 100 Rodale-organized organic gardening clubs.

The magazine had Floyd Allen working as West Coast editor.  He also helped lead the Rodale organization’s unsuccessful attempt to become an organic certifier in California.  Another editor involved in this effort returned home and described organic certification as “a can of worms.”  After the Rodale Press gave up on this, it helped fund a group of organic growers who organized what is now California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).

The editors also were working on “The New Food Chain,” a book aimed a  bringing organic farmers and consumers together to challenge the industrialization of agriculture.

The book cited a survey that showed 36 percent of Americans said they were convinced that food is no longer safe.  And it called for sweeping aside artificial barriers that were making it difficult for farmers and consumers to work together.

Ralph Engleken’s Organic farm in NE Iowa

I was impressed, as I had been with Clarence and his organic farm, and signed up with the Rodale Press to gather and report information on organic farming in the Midwest.  My goal was to use the funds provided to visit 50 organic farms.  But shortly after returning home, an editor called and asked me to interview and photograph Ralph Engleken, an organic farmer in northeast Iowa, and send in a story.

I want to introduce you to Ralph and several other outstanding organic farmers I interviewed and wrote about over the next two or three years.  These stories describe the culture of organic farming, the values these farmers shared, their concerns about chemical farming, and the accomplishments that made them so special.

Hundreds of cattle and hogs on Engleken’s Organic Farm

The Engleken’s 700-acre organic operation with its 145 bushels per acre corn yield, well above the county average, and its four-year corn-oats-hay rotation, was impressive.  Heavy applications of livestock manure needed to produce good crops came from 200 stock cows plus an additional 300 calves purchased each year to feed out along with 400 hogs.

But what stood out was Ralph and Rita’s story about why they had switched to organic 14 years earlier.  It was a story much like those I heard over and over from organic farmers in the 1970s.

“The whole family was sick all the time . . . skin rashes, fever,” Ralph reported.  “We finally traced it to the clothes I’d been wearing when I was spraying on chemicals.  We had just moved to this farm when we found that out and we’ve been farming it organically ever since.”

Van’s Health Food Store Near the Grinnell College Campus

I returned to Clarence’s farm to do a story for the magazine and found his direct sales to consumers had been so successful that he had purchased a building and opened Van’s Health Foods near the Grinnell College campus.  Customers he had been supplying for years with organic pork, or had been on his fresh egg route in town, helped make it an immediate success.

“A lot of people object to organic foods because the price is too high,”  he explained. “But if you can sell direct from the farm to the consumer, there isn’t anybody going to beat you on price.”

Ray Rolf’s Organic Farm near Fremont, Nebraska

It was highly unusual to find organic farmers who were close neighbors.  But that was the case with Del Akerlund, K.C. Livermore, and Ralph Rolfs who had adjoining crop and livestock operations near Fremont, Nebraska, and farmed a total of 1,300 acres.

Livermore admits he was a little skeptical about switching to organic.

“But every year it got better, and my fourth year was the big turning point.  We had better crops, we had fewer weeds, and we had easier farming.  It was just wonderful to be able to farm that way again.”

K.C. Livermore’s Organic Farm near Fremont, Nebraska

K.C. Livermore’s drought-proofed cornfield

In the summer of 1974 the worst drought since the Dust Bowl days hit eastern Nebraska and ruined the crops of conventional farmers, even those who irrigated.  But Akerlund, Livermore, and Rolfs had good crops due to the way organic practices had increased the water-holding capacity of their soil and drought proofed their farms.

Del Akerlund’s Organic Farm Near Fremont, Nebraska

They also shared the Nebraska Wildlife Federation’s first Conservation Award of the Year for improving habitat for quail and pheasants and other birds they credited with protecting their crops from insect damage.

“On the last round when we were combining oats,” Akerlund reported, “there were about 200 pheasants running ahead of the combine and we had to stop several times to let them get out of the way.”

Akerlund also talked about his continuing effort to get the University of Nebraska to conduct some organic farming research.  I learned later that the assistant director of the Nebraska Agricultural  Experiment Station at Mead, after spending an afternoon on Del’s farm, established the first Midwest research plots comparing the performance of organic and conventional farming.  These experimental plots, started 35 years ago, continue to document the benefits of farming organically.

Walter and Oscar Hobbie lived a mile apart on organic farms near Flandreau, South Dakota, and dairy cattle, beef cattle, and hogs consumed all the feed produced on their 1,100-acre operation.  Their large livestock operation also produced lots of manure to fertilize their fields.  Like so many organic farmers, the first thing they noticed after switching to organic was greatly improved livestock health.

“Our veterinary thought we had switched vets,” Walter recalled, “because he didn’t have to come out anymore like he used to.”

Walter Hobbie

Ray Juhl, who farmed 2,500 acres near Middle River, Minnesota, saw production of organically grown grain and stone-milled flour as an emerging industry with strong growth potential.  He started out turning out small bags of flour under a “Natural Way Mill” label for health food stores.  By the mid-1970s he had one of the nation’s largest on-farm milling setups.

“No-one has ever shown this kind of interest in anything we’ve ever done before,” he reported.  “All I know is that the visitors, the mail, and the phone calls would indicate nearly everybody wants some.”

Lester Frohrip (left), president of the Soil Association of Minnesota, talks with board members Melvin Duntaman, Ardell Anderson and Larry Eggen

Finally, several Minnesota organic farmers decided to do something to challenge the land grant universities that were grabbing all of the agricultural research money.  Six months after setting up the Soil Association of Minnesota, they landed a research grant from the Minnesota Resources Committee.  The $3,500 grant funded a study comparing tile line discharges on organic and conventional farms to determine whether nitrogen fertilizer applications were causing high nitrate levels in farm wells.

The founding members also established this new organization to address related issues like the fact that higher fertilizer applications didn’t produce proportionately higher yields, that soil organic matter was dropping, that the soil was getting harder and more difficult to work, that pigeon grass had become a serious problem, and that corn didn’t dry down in the fall like it had earlier.

By the middle of the 1970s, new developments made organic farming information more available.  The Rodale Press published the “Organic Farming Yearbook of Agriculture” in 1975.  Two years later it published “Organic Farming: Yesterday’s and Tomorrow’s Agriculture,” a 340-page book packed with organic farming information.

The Rodale Press also launched The New Farm, a magazine that focused on organic and sustainable agriculture.  Most of the organic farming content that had been carried in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine, as a result, was carried instead in the new publication.  Chuck Walters, who launched Acres USA in 1971, had built this publication into an important source of organic farming information and had built a following for the annual Acres conferences.

Organic Farmers Also Were Organizing

The Minnesota Soil Association and the South Dakota Soil Association began convening meetings and publishing newsletters.  Midwest Organic Producers Association, organized a short time later to promote organic farming, launched a newsletter serving members of organic farming groups in Minnesota, South Dakota, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Nebraska.

Although the problems and experiences of organic farmers were receiving more attention, no attempt had been made to ask them directly how they were doing overall.  The first attempt, a Center for Rural Affairs survey of 147 organic farmers in Nebraska, produced these findings:

–Contrary to the belief that organic farmers did well financially only because they sold their products to health food stores at high prices, the survey showed most of themn sold their grain and livestock the same places their chemical neighbors did.  But with lower input costs and comparable yields, thkey were able to realize a greater net profit.

–Some of the survey respondents reported their yields with organically-grown crops were better than the yields they had before switching to organic.  This was especially true for soybeans, oats, alfalfa, and wheat.

–Many of the respondents reported that livestock preferred the grain they produced on organic farms, that livestock were healthier when fed hay and grain produced organically, that they seldom needed the services of a veterinarian, and that the feed value of grain produced on organic farms was superior.

The survey reported concluded that most farmers switched because they were concerned about the disappearance of wildlife on their farms, about soil that lacked life and had become hard and difficult to work, about livestock health problems, and about the adverse impact of chemical residues on their families and their livestock.

Organic Input Suppliers

Another important develop in the Midwest during this period was the growing number of small companies that sold foliar sprays, soil conditioners, bulk and bagged compost, granite dust, and similar products to organic farmers.  As noted earlier, the Rodale Organic Directory published in 1970 included a state-by-state listing of more than 200 of these small input suppliers.

Some, like Hy-Brid Sales Company in Council Bluffs, Iowa, marketed multi-year “programs” to transitioning organic farmers that included soil tests processed at private labs and the fertilizer and soil conditioners and other products that these tests called for.  The company, started by Bill Graves  more than 50 years ago, provided information and organic inputs to many of the farmers who switched to organic in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas.

These companies brought farmers together at dinner meetings in the winter months to provide information to farmers thinking about switching to organic and to market their products.  Many organic farmers met and shared information at these meetings.

These events also provided company representatives opportunities to push back against conventional fertilizer companies pressing state regulators to prohibit the sale of organic fertilizers.  And against Extension Service agents who put out press releases slamming these and similar organic inputs as a waste of money.  My own files show many organic farmers at that time were applying Agriserum, Wonder Life Trace Minerals, Clod Buster, Sur-Gro, Microlite, Calphos, granite dust, kelp and fish foliar fertilizers, and similar products.

Organic Bashing

Although organic farmers consistently had comparable yields and did well financially, they had  difficulty countering claims that they were little more than throwbacks to the past.  Many of these outrageous claims were made by people at USDA.

Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz began the 1970s, for example, with a statement that reflected his strong bias against organic farmers.  “Before we go back to an organic agriculture in this country,” he told a network news interviewer, “somebody must decide which 50 million Americans we are going to let starve or go hungry.”  Later Deputy Secretary John White claimed manure piles as high as the Empire State Building would be needed to make organic farming work.

Positive Organic Media

But some unexpected good news about organic farming several years later put these critics on the defensive.  But and other organic farming bashers were stunned on July 20, 1975, when they opened their Sunday New York Times and saw a long front page story headlined “Organic Farms Found Efficient.”  It was illustrated by a photo of an Iowa farmer in a large field of organically-grown corn.

The story reported on a Washington University study that concluded that farming organically is a viable economic alternative for commercial-size crop and livestock farms in the Midwest.  Data collected during a 3-year period from 14 matched sets of conventional and organic farms showed that organic farms had somewhat lower crop sales per acre of cropland, that conventional farms had higher purchased input costs, that organic farms had somewhat higher labor requirements, and that farmers in both groups made about the same amount of money.  A surprising and important difference was that the conventional farmers used more than twice as much energy.

Organic farming critics were really upset when a report on this research was published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, a respected peer-reviewed journal.  Several leading newspapers, including the Des Moines Register, also weighed in with editorials criticizing USDA and the land grant institutions for emphasizing farm chemicals while paying little attention to their environmental and human health consequences.  Even Science, one of the nation’s most prestigious journals, gave the Washington University study a favorable review.

Organic Survey and Benefits

Another result of these positive developments was increased public interest in what motivated organic farmers.  A Washington University team responded with a survey of more than 300 organic farmers who farmed 100 acres or more in Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.  It showed they were not “back to the landers” with small marginal operations farmed with horses as many critics had claimed.

“The reasons for choosing organic methods generally were practical and related to such specific problems with conventional farming as possible adverse health effects of pesticides.  Ideological or philosophical considerations also played a lesser role,” the survey showed.  “But choosing to use organic methods does not necessarily set organic farmers apart in a fundamental way from the conventional farmers who are their neighbors.”

The top five reported advantages of switching to organic farming were healthier for the farmer and his family, healthier for livestock, more in harmony with nature, better for the soil, and better for the environment.

Other studies and surveys late in the 1970s confirmed this information and helped lay the groundwork for the really big development that came at the end of the 1970s.  That was the request to a team of USDA scientists from Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, to conduct a study of organic farming.  Bergland, a Minnesota farmer before becoming involved in politics, had a neighbor who was a successful organic farmer and did not like the way organic farmers were disrespected at USDA

A USDA press release on June 19, 1979, reported that Anson Bertrand, the head of USDA’s Science and Education Administration, had put together a Coordinating Team for Organic Farming to study the benefits of organic farming.  He noted that many conventional farmers questioned whether organic farming could produce enough food to feed the millions of people who must be fed in modern times.

“Has new knowledge already boosted the productive power of organic farming?, he asked.  “We’ll find out.  When the facts are in, we’ll use them to develop a program or policy recommendations for Secretary Bergland.  If it appears reasonable to do so, we may suggest additional redirection of USDA research, education, and funding.”

And that’s exactly what happened a few months later when USDA published the famous 1980 Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming.  It estimated that there were at least 20,000 organic farmers in this country and concluded that the full range of research and education programs should be developed to address their needs and problems.

This unexpected and highly significant development, endorsed by the nation’s secretary of agriculture, showed how far organic farmers had come in 10 years in gaining respect and acknowledgment for their many achievements.  It provided a most fitting conclusion to the history of organic farming in the Midwest in the 1970s.

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics· July/August 2010

If you think it’s tough now trying to derail the global campaign by Monsanto and others to mislead the media and convince gullible policymakers that GMOs are the solution to feeding the world, you haven’t seen anything yet. The U.S. Supreme Court has just handed the instigators of this effort a big political gift in its decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case.

This decision has opened the money floodgates, allowing Monsanto and other corporations to spend as much company money as they like to finance all kinds of ads supporting or opposing federal and state candidates identified by name. It’s a direct threat to candidates who promise to do something about GMO contamination of organic farms, for example, or who challenge the government’s campaign to spread GMO agriculture worldwide.

It has swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations and the spending of company money in political campaigns. Congress since 1907 has prohibited domestic corporations from using their money “directly or indirectly” to elect candidates for public office. Congress later made it clear that the ban applied to political advertisements and other independent election spending as well as to direct contributions to candidates.

Worse yet, the new decision allows corporations to contribute company money to political front groups that buy attack ads but are not required to disclose who paid for them. This stealth campaigning puts these corporations in the enviable position of being able to hide from voters their funding of efforts to elect or defeat public officials. You’re not going to see any political attack ads signed off with messages saying “I’m from Monsanto and we approve this message which we paid for with company money.”

The court decision significantly increases the ability of corporations to influence members of Congress and other elected officials who shape agriculture’s future. It also creates even more trouble for organic advocates who are outspent many times over attempting to persuade the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other regulators, elected officials, and the media to support organic farming as the foundation for U.S. food and agriculture production systems.

GMO Contamination of Organic Farms

This threatening new political atmosphere makes it much less likely that members of Congress will step up and sponsor legislation to shift liability for GMO contamination of organic farms to manufacturers and patent holders, for example, or legislation requiring the Food and Drug Administration to institute mandatory labeling of GM foods.

The case of Citizens United v. FEC was not about Monsanto or GMOs or organic farming. It was about involvement of multi-billion dollar corporations in political campaigns and its impact, as a result, is bad news for organic agriculture. It dilutes the influence of farmers and consumers and others who support organic farming and oppose GMOs. It also increases the ability of agribusiness corporations, including multinationals headquartered overseas, to influence public officials who shape and implement farm policy.

Monsanto and other agribusiness corporations had plenty of political money before the court decision. They could spend whatever it took to lobby members of Congress to support biotechnology and the widespread use of toxic pesticides in agriculture. They also could spend unlimited amounts to fight attempts by organic farmers to petition the courts and federal regulators to ban GMO alfalfa and other major crops and to protect their farms and their seeds from GMO contamination.

USDA has been a regulatory pushover for Monsanto and other members of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. It is protecting Monsanto now with a draft environmental impact study on GMO alfalfa that ignores the threat of GMO contamination on organic and non-GMO farming and says consumers don’t care about GMO contamination. It ignores the significant adverse impact GMO contamination will have on organic and non-GMO conventional alfalfa seed and hay growers and on dairy producers who rely on organic and non-GMO hay for feed.

The State Department also is shilling for GMOs worldwide. Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, recently stressed the government’s commitment to overcoming obstacles to the promotion of GMO crops at a biotechnology industries conference. He said the government needs help dealing with a wave of regulatory decisions restricting or banning GMO foods and crops in many other countries.

Campaign Spending Limits Eliminated

But lobbying and court fights are skirmishes compared to the threat posed by this decision. This threat is driven specifically by the court’s ruling granting corporations the same free speech rights as ordinary individuals under federal, state, and local election law. This frees them for the first time to target both House and Senate candidates and other candidates for public office and to spend unlimited amounts of company money in campaigns to try to defeat them. It also means they can spend whatever it takes to bully elected officials who support organic agriculture and who propose and support stricter regulation of GMOs and pesticides. If intimidating members of Congress in their offices in Washington fails to get results, these corporations can throw unlimited amounts of money against them in their campaigns for reelection. Do what we want now, they can warn a lawmaker or staff member, or be prepared to face the consequences at the ballot box later.

It is unclear whether the decision will prevent foreign companies from influencing U.S. elections. Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent said the logic of the majority opinion “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

The decision also impacts policy relating to corporate domination of food policy in 2020, for example, or 2050 when some international agencies are predicting the world’s population could reach 9 billion. Will GMO agriculture be the government-forced production model or will organic agriculture eventually become the dominant food production system?

This decision gives a big political boost to important pending legislation that would put organic agriculture at an even greater disadvantage in U.S. foreign aid programs. The proposed legislation, already approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would create for the first time a federal mandate for GMO research as part of future foreign aid programs. Although foreign aid’s main focus is agricultural development, approximately $7.7 billion of the proposed funding would be directed almost entirely to genetically-modified crop research.

Organic Research Left Out of Foreign Aid Bill

This legislation, which does not include any funding for organic research, is supported and promoted by an industry cabal that includes Monsanto and the Gates Foundation. The $7.7 billion is many times more than all the money the federal government has ever spent on organic research.

It also would strengthen the cozy relationship the foreign aid program already has with Monsanto. The aid program partnered with Monsanto, for example, in developing a virus-resistant sweet potato in Kenya that failed to out-perform local varieties. Although this project failed, the partnership helped Monsanto gain Kenyan government approval of a food safety law allowing commercialization of GMO crops.

Although Congress could limit the effects of this radical Supreme Court decision, attempts so far have led to little more than name calling. Democrats have proposed legislation that would do little more than banning foreign-controlled corporations from spending money on ads supporting or opposing candidates. Foreign individuals and corporations are currently prohibited from making direct contributions to candidates for federal office. The Republican line so far is that limiting the impact of the court’s decision would infringe on freedom of speech.

This cowardly approach to reform provides a huge challenge to the organic community and others that support organic food and farming and are directly threatened. It seems clear that any attempt to limit the court’s decision and derail the government’s global efforts to promote GMOs worldwide will require political mobilization of organic farmers and all other citizens who believe our government should not be for sale.

This article was first printed in the July/August 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service.

Organic Research Then And Now

Organic Field Day Presentation
Lamberton, Minnesota

Roger Blobaum July 8, 2010

I am here today representing The Ceres Trust, a national foundation that makes organic farming a priority. It is not appropriate for me, as a foundation representative, to talk about mobilizing political support for organic research.

But I can talk about the impact political action has had on organic research in the past and the persistent efforts of organic farmers and others to build support for organic research. I want to do that by telling the story of organic research in this country, a 40- year saga with lots of ups and downs.

The program for this University of Minnesota field day shows how far organic research has come over the last few years. Land grant universities were slow to accept organic farming as a serious or suitable research topic. And they were dismissive, even disrespectful, of organic farmers in the early years.

It is hard to imagine now how anybody could have been against organic research. But many did oppose it. Two critical reports, the first in 1978 focusing on land grant universities and the second in 1997 targeting USDA, illustrate how bad the organic research situation was in the beginning.

The first was a survey of more than 500 organic farmers in five Midwest states, including Minnesota, that identified lack of organic research as a significant barrier to adoption of organic methods. Many farmers wrote disparaging comments in the questionnaire margins about the lack of support from their land grant universities. And only six of the 214 respondents reported they knew of any organic research being done at their state university.

When asked to respond, the deans of agriculture at all five universities reported they did not know of any organic research being done at their institutions One with an attitude went further. We aren’t doing any organic research now, he wrote, and furthermore we aren’t going to be doing any.

The other discouraging report, which targeted USDA, came 20 years later. It was “Searching for the O Word,” a report of a 1997 Organic Farming Research Foundation study. OFRF’s search through the more than 30,000 agricultural research projects in USDA’s research portfolio showed only 34 that qualified as “strong organic.”

This organic field day illustrates the progress organic farmers and land grant university researchers have made in turning this around. “Searching for the O Word” was especially important as a turning point in building support in Congress for organic research and getting the situation turned around at USDA.

We now have a growing organic research community in the Midwest. It develops and disseminates new information that helps organic farmers become more productive and profitable. And information that helps conventional farmers transition to organic. The Ceres Trust is pleased to have the opportunity to help support this work.

We began compiling a researcher data base when we became involved in organic research grantmaking last year. Instead of the 100, or even 150, organic researchers we had expected to find in the North Central Region, we have identified more than 225 scientists, graduate students, and others engaged in organic research. The number would be much higher if all the organic farmers participating in organic research projects were included.

We also found more evidence of strength in the organic research community. We had no idea what the response would be when we announced we would provide $500,000 in research grants of up to $60,000 a year for three years. We were surprised and pleased when 26 organic research proposals arrived in the mail last September.

More surprising, nearly all were for quality projects proposed by organic research teams from land grant universities. Instead of funding eight or nine projects as planned initially, we responded to this large number of strong proposals by funding 13 for a total of $1.9 million. Two of these grants went to University of Minnesota researchers for work here at Lamberton. One is for high tunnel work and the other is for work on edible grain legumes for organic cropping systems.

We are repeating this competition in 2010 and the Request for Applications has been posted. Since these grants were made, we also have made grants of up to $10,000 to 10 graduate students, including two from the University of Minnesota, to support organic research projects. These, too, were high quality proposals and we plan to repeat this program as well.

Organic farming has been my main interest since 1972 when I began interviewing, photographing, surveying, researching, and writing about organic farmers in the Midwest. This has led to my recent interest in the history of organic research. The story of the evolution of organic research is one of the most interesting in the history of American agriculture. It is the topic of my presentation.

The story begins here in Southwest Minnesota. Organic research history was made a few miles from here in the early 1970s when several organic farmers set up the Minnesota Soil Association to raise money for organic research. Six months later they received a $3,500 research grant from a Minnesota state government agency.

It funded a study comparing tile line discharges on organic and conventional farms to determine whether nitrogen fertilizer applications were causing high nitrate levels in farm wells. Profs. Lester Schmid and Charles Reinert of Southwest Minnesota State at Marshall had been identified by organic farmers as scientists who shared their interest in organic research. They helped shape the project and conducted the research.

I believe this was the first government-funded organic research conducted anywhere in this country. I interviewed and photographed the farmers involved and wrote a story describing their achievement. It was published by the Rodale Press in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine, which had a circulation of 900,00, and republished later in the 1975 Organic Farming Yearbook of Agriculture.
Soil Association members believed farming organically could solve many of the problems they were seeing on Minnesota farms. Soil tests showed organic matter levels were dropping, for example, and farmers were reporting that the soil was getting harder and more difficult to work. Pigeon grass was becoming a serious problem and higher fertilizer applications did not produce expected higher yields. They believed organic research could provide some answers.

This early research had a much different focus than organic research today. Farmers wanted research that documented the economic viability of organic farming, identified and analyzed barriers to adoption of organic methods, examined the quality and quantity of feed grown on organically-managed land, addressed weed and soil health and similar problems, and challenged the conventional wisdom that organic farming was a throwback to the past.

Another early response to the growing farmer interest in organic research was a 1974 Center for Rural Affairs survey of 147 organic farmers in Nebraska that attempted to identify why they had switched to organic methods. The responses suggest some of the beliefs shared by organic farmers at that time.

Some of the farmer respondents reported their yields with organically-grown crops were better than the yields they had before switching to organic. With good yields and lower input costs, they reported, they were doing as well or better financially than their conventional neighbors.

Many reported that livestock preferred grain produced on organic farms, that livestock were healthier when fed hay and grain produced organically, that they seldom needed the services of a veterinarian, and that the feed value of grain produced on organic farms was superior.

Although organic farmers consistently reported they had comparable yields and did well financially, they received neither support nor respect from USDA or the agricultural establishment overall.

This changed with publication in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, of the results of a 3-year Washington University study funded by the National Science Foundation. The surprising conclusion was that farming organically was a viable economic alternative for commercial-size crop and livestock farms in the Midwest.

Data collected over three years from 14 matched pairs of conventional and organic farms showed that organic farms had somewhat lower crop sales per acre of cropland, that conventional farms had higher purchased input costs, that organic farms had somewhat higher labor requirements, and that farmers in both groups made about the same amount of money. An unexpected difference was that the conventional farmers used more than twice as much energy.

A follow-up Washington University survey of 300 organic farmers from Minnesota and four other Midwest states identified five important advantages of switching to organic farming. They were healthier for the farmer and his family, healthier for livestock, more in harmony with nature, better for the soil, and better for the environment.

Other studies and surveys helped lay the groundwork for a significant organic research development at the end of the 1970s. That was the request to a team of USDA scientists from Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, a Minnesota farmer before becoming involved in politics, to conduct a study of organic farming. Bergland had a neighbor who was a successful organic farmer and did not like the way organic farmers were disrespected at USDA.

The result was USDA’s 1980 Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming, which recommended development of the full range of research and education programs to address the problems and needs of organic farmers. The report was discussed at a series of public meetings on land grant university campuses. Politically it permanently changed the focus of the debate about organic research from the land grant universities, where some organic research had finally begun, to Washington and Congress and USDA.

More than 20,000 farmers requested copies of the 94-page report before its distribution was blocked a year later by the new Reagan Administration. In 1982 the full-time organic farming coordinator position that was recommended and established at USDA was abolished and an order to destroy all remaining copies of the report was issued.

Congressional followup to the 1980 report, including the proposed Organic Farming Act of 1982, met strong and consistent USDA opposition. Eventually a “low input agriculture” research program was authorized in the 1985 farm bill and implemented three years later as the LISA program. All references to organic farming were deleted, however, and the result was a competitive grants program that funded research and education on reduced-chemical practices.

The program was revamped in the 1990 farm bill and renamed the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Although the legislative language and the implementation guidelines of both the LISA and the SARE programs avoided any reference to organic farming, several projects with organic content were funded.

This was the first time any kind of USDA funding provided support for organic research. Only about 15 percent of SARE’s more than 3,000 research and education projects since have had an organic focus or organic content.

Another attempt to gain USDA support for organic research came in the bill proposing the Organic Foods Production Act in 1989. But USDA and agriculture industry opponents threatened to block all standard setting and other organic provisions in the bill unless the research provisions were dropped. So, 10 years after the 1980 USDA report, still another attempt to authorize a federal organic specific research initiative had failed.

The coalition of consumer, environmental, and other organizations that had supported the Organic Foods Production Act joined several organic and sustainable agriculture groups in continuing to press Congress in the early 1990s to authorize organic research funding. But no progress was made until the “Searching for the O Word” report was published in 1997.
The agriculture committees in Congress, with their perfect record of opposing organic research, took little notice of this embarrassing report and did nothing. But the Agricultural Research Service did respond.

It identified 188 of its more than 2,000 staff scientists who stated an interest in organic research and surveyed them about barriers to doing this kind of research. The barriers identified included lack of an agency commitment to organic research, lack of certified land needed for replicated experimental plots, and difficulty working with organic farmers on cooperative on-farm projects.

Organic farming advocates through the 1990s were not satisfied with the small number of organic projects slipped into SARE, ARS, and other existing USDA research programs. They wanted more. The first positive response was authorization in 1998 of an Organic Transition initiative. It was included in a much larger USDA competitive grants program and was funded three years later. You can see there was no sense of urgency here.

Finally in 2002, five years after OFRF’s “Searching for the O Word” report and almost 30 years after Minnesota organic farmers got their first organic research grant from a state agency, Congress passed legislation providing funding specifically for organic research. The new Organic Agriculture Research and Education Initiative mandated an appropriation of $3 million per year for five years for competitive research grants.

Congress revisited OREI in the latest farm bill and extended it for another five years with mandatory funding of $15 million per year. The OREI program, among other things, provides support for development of new and improved seed varieties particularly suited for organic farming.

Gains made for organic research in the last farm bill are significant. But funding for research, as well as extension and other organic programs, falls far short of the high level of support in Europe that has enabled many countries there to set official organic sector goals as high as 10 to 15 percent.

With all the talk of cutting the deficit, is it likely Congress will continue to provide organic research funding? The House Agriculture Committee and organizations like the National Organic Coalition, OFRF, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Organic Trade Association have already started work on the next farm bill.

But it’s far too early to predict what Congress or the Administration might try to do. As a foundation representative, I am not here to make any political preductions. But I would like to share my own personal reading of the situation. I am convinced organic research supporters will have to fight hard to maintain the current level of organic research funding.

There are two encouraging notes. One is the fact that Mark Lipson, author of OFRF’s “O Word” report, is the new organic farming coordinator at USDA. Lipson worked closely for years with organic research supporters in Congress and within USDA and would appear to be in a position to try to block attempts to cut organic research funding.

The other encouraging note is USDA’s positive response to the National Organic Action Plan, which includes a strong organic research section and calls for fair share targets for organic research. That means budgets for organic research would have to be at least proportional to the percentage of food marketed that is organic. The plan also calls for an organic farmers research network and development of organic research plans for several USDA agencies.

For those of you involved in organic research, or farming organically, it is not too early to start paying attention to developments shaping organic provisions in the next farm bill. I would urge you to tune in now, to stay tuned, to be aware that organic programs are always vulnerable, and to help make sure the current level of federal funding for organic research is maintained.

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · May/June 2010

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is engaged in a campaign to convince the organic community that its support for organic farming now extends well beyond the National Organic Program (NOP) and includes active involvement of every one of its 27 agencies.

Is it possible to spread organic awareness throughout USDA, a huge bureaucracy with more than 100,000 employees, and get every agency on board and every employee to plant a garden? This was one of Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan’s more ambitious goals when she assumed the No. 2 position at USDA more than a year ago. There is increasing evidence she is getting this done.

This progress was evident at an April 16 organic roundtable where stakeholders ranging from the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and representatives of USDA agencies ranging from the Economic Research Service (ERS) to the Risk Management Agency (RMA) spent a morning comparing notes and providing updates on what they do to support organic agriculture.

Having a long list of USDA agency representatives stand before a roomful of organic advocates to proudly list what their agencies are doing to support organic farming was a hard-to-believe Washington happening. The response of organic observers ranged from mild surprise to cautious acknowledgment of clear signs USDA’s unreliable commitment to organic farming might finally be ending.

The roundtable was organized by the Organic Working Group, which includes representatives of all USDA agencies and meets regularly to coordinate organic programming. It evolved from a small group that struggled for nearly 20 years as an underground organic movement at USDA. This band of organic advocates, led by Catherine Greene of the Economic Research Service, worked unofficially with OFRF and other groups while maintaining a low profile to stay out of trouble with political appointees in the front office.

“A few individuals kept this group going for many years and now we are kicking this effort up a notch,” Merrigan said in remarks opening the roundtable event. “We want every single agency to see organic as part of its mission.”

She also emphasized the need to provide some relief for the NOP. It needs to shed activities other agencies can take over, she noted, so the NOP staff can concentrate on regulations, enforcement, and other organic integrity issues. The President’s budget, she noted, proposes another sizeable increase in funding to help the NOP do a better job.

Bob Scowcroft of OFRF, who led off the stakeholder presentations, cited the “incredible importance” of the Organic Working Group and the significance of having all

USDA agencies working together. “We have wanted full integration of all agencies into this effort for many years,” he said

He reminded the government representatives that progress requires much more than inter-agency coordination. He noted that the Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming, the comprehensive USDA report issued in 1980, included 27recommendations for agency support of organic farming. “After 30 years,” he said, “We have completed only two of the report’s 27 recommendations, although some are being worked on.”

One development that responds to the 1980 report overall is USDA’s recent announcement that it is appointing an organic farming program specialist to “coordinate development of a USDA organic farming plan; and to identify, monitor, and evaluate organic activities across USDA agencies.” This is a huge step in the effort to integrate all USDA agencies into the organic agriculture effort.

A New Organic Farming Coordinator?

Although the job announcement does not refer to the new specialist as the USDA organic farming coordinator that organic advocates have been calling for, the new specialist’s duties appear to cover everything an organic farming coordinator would do. They include providing leadership, information, and ideas “to help in conceiving, formulating, and directing programs, policies, technical standards, and guidelines” as well as coordinating the development of an organic farming plan.

Can an organic farming plan be developed and adopted without a vision of what organic farming programs would look like in five years, or 10 years, or longer? Although a vision seems to be missing so far, it is highly likely organic advocates will insist on seeing how USDA views the role of organic farming in American agriculture in the future. Agency representatives at the roundtable were urged to consider adapting, or even adopting, the organic community’s newly-developed vision for U.S. organic agriculture.

This vision of the future, which includes organic farming as the foundation for American agriculture, was presented by Michael Sligh of Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). He advised agency representatives that this is the focus of the National Organic Action Plan, a 40-page plan that was completed early this year and reflects the input of hundreds of organic advocates. Their views were gathered during a nationwide process coordinated by RAFI and the National Organic Coalition.

The organic action plan articulates a shared vision, sets objectives and benchmarks for measuring organic farming’s social and environmental benefits, and formulates proposals for the future growth of U.S. organic food and agriculture for the next decade and beyond. It also cites “the failure of the U.S. government and the food and farming sector overall to develop goals for the growth of organic beyond market-based growth goals.”

The roundtable also featured an open mike period where individuals raised organic farming issues that they hoped USDA agency representatives would address. It was similar to the public comment period provided during each meeting of the National Organic Standards Board.

Participants noted that this session was different from most USDA listening sessions, where time is limited and agency officials end up doing most of the talking. Another important difference is that in this organic roundtable session some of the individual speakers received immediate agency responses.

The Risk Management Agency representative, for example, reported the Congressionally-mandated study of crop insurance problems experienced by organic farmers is nearing completion. The National Agricultural Statistics Service representative conceded that much more organic data is needed. He reported, however, that it appears more organic data-gathering funding will be available in the coming year. He also reported that more organic questions are being proposed for the 2012 agricultural census.

Organic Import Data Breakthrough

Miles McEvoy, who directs the National Organic Program, reported that USDA and the Department of Commerce are finally working together to develop product codes to identify and track imported organic products. This is a positive response to long-standing requests coming from organic farmers and consumers alike. Although trade estimates have been available, USDA has been clueless about what kind of organic products are being imported, the amount of organic products being imported, and where these imported organic products come from.

The roundtable wound up with agency representatives making final comments and, in several cases, distributing brief reports on what they do to support organic farming. The Agricultural Research Service report, for example, noted that the agency conducts organic production research at 26 locations across the country. It also noted that its organic action plan includes developing strategies to transition from conventional to organic production and identifying ecosystem service benefits that organic farmers provide.

When USDA converted a headquarters parking lot into an organic garden a year ago, skeptics questioned whether this signaled a change in direction or was just another Washington photo op. The garden looked great the morning the roundtable was held, with peas, lettuce, broccoli, carrots, and beets flourishing in the manicured beds. And the change in direction that was signaled, at least measured by the success of the organic roundtable, also looked very promising. It may be that the transformation of organic policy called for 30 years ago in the 1980 USDA report may finally become a reality.

This article was first printed in the May/June 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · March/April 2010

At this time 30 years ago the most important organic farming policy document ever produced by the federal government was being edited for the last time and typed up at the U.S. Department of Agriculture so it could be rushed to the Government Printing Office to meet a July publication deadline.

No government report on organic farming since has even come close to being as comprehensive and significant as “Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming,” the official 94-page document that summarized the work and findings of a USDA study team given less than a year to complete its assignment.

Every USDA policy and program with any potential to impact organic farming in any way was scrutinized. This included how the department gathered organic farming information and whether or not it had the administrative capacity to coordinate any organic initiatives taken.

The study team’s work assignment and deadline came straight from Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, the only secretary of agriculture before or since with the political courage to make an unconditional commitment to organic agriculture. Bergland, a Minnesota farmer before becoming involved in politics, had been impressed and convinced years earlier by a neighbor who was a successful organic farmer.

The 1980 report calling for research and education support for organic farming was published nine years after an infamous statement by Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz reinforced USDA’s bad attitude toward organic farming. “Before we go back to an organic agriculture in this country,” he told a network news reporter during a 1971 interview, “somebody must decide which 50 million Americans we are going to let starve or go hungry.”

Butz Statement Unchallenged at USDA

That surprising and highly publicized statement was unchallenged at that time at USDA. It also was unchallenged by the agriculture committees in both houses of Congress that write farm bills and appropriate USDA’s funds, by the land grant university system, and by the agricultural establishment overall. Organic farming had been officially ignored or ridiculed, or both, until the new secretary from Minnesota and his team took over.

Organic farmer complaints that the Farmers Home Administration was requiring loan applicants to use farm chemicals had resulted in a Bergland memo sent to county offices calling for an end to this practice. Other complaints about discrimination against organic farmers focused on unreasonable cosmetic requirements of federal fruit and vegetable marketing orders and policies at USDA’s Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) that required farmers to use commercial fertilizer in order to qualify for its cost share program.

A surprise USDA press release on June 19, 1979, reported that Anson Bertrand, the head of USDA’s Science and Education Administration, had appointed a Coordinating Team for Organic Agriculture to study organic farming. He noted that many conventional farmers questioned whether organic farming could produce enough food to feed the millions of people who must be fed in modern times.

In his statement, Bertrand raised the issue of whether new knowledge had already boosted the productive power of organic farming.

“We’ll find out,” he said. “When the facts are in, we’ll use them to develop a program or policy recommendations for Secretary Bergland. If it appears reasonable to do so, we may suggest additional redirection of USDA research, education, and funding.”

Report Estimates 20,000 Farming Organically

The study team of USDA scientists commissioned on-farm case studies of 69 organic farms in 23 states, cooperated with The New Farm magazine to survey its organic farmer subscribers, interviewed and corresponded with a long list of organic farming advocates and practitioners, and sent teams to Japan and Europe to tour organic farms and research institutes and report back.

The result was the comprehensive report USDA published the following July, which was made available by mail to anyone who wanted a copy. Thousands of farmers wrote in and requested a copy. USDA also discussed the report at a series of well-attended meetings on land grant university campuses in New Hampshire, California, Washington, and Nebraska.

USDA estimated that 20,000 organic farmers were doing well on America’s farms. It recommended development of the full range of research and education programs needed to address their needs and problems. This included the 18 specific recommendations outlined in the report.

But the report also included a clear statement addressing the challenge of implementing all the other recommendations made. “USDA,” it said, “should establish a permanent organic resources coordinator and multi-disciplinary advisory committee on organic agriculture.”

That was the one recommendation in the report that Secretary Bergland could implement right away and he took action immediately by appointing USDA’s first organic farming coordinator.

His responsibility included establishing a working relationship between USDA and organic farmers and their organizations. The job included gathering information on the organic sector and keeping USDA informed “of the problems and needs of organic growers on matters of information, support, and incentive programs.”

The new coordinator also was directed to take the lead in examining public policies that discriminated against organic farmers and that adversely impacted the goals of organic agriculture. Following an analysis of policy issues, the coordinator was given the responsibility of making recommendations “regarding how these policies could be modified to better serve the needs of organic farmers without adversely affecting the interests of conventional agriculture.”

Unfortunately this unprecedented initiative was destroyed politically when the new Reagan Administration took over in 1981. The organic farming coordinator was fired, the remaining copies of the 1980 report were destroyed, and implementation of the many recommendations was abruptly terminated.

Coordinator Recommendation Gains New Life

But one 1980 recommendation that critics had hoped would never be resurrected has gained new life over the last two years. It turned up as an important recommendation submitted by the National Organic Coalition to the new Obama Administration. It was included in recommendations aimed at giving organic agriculture “a greater role and prominence within the Administration relative to previous administrations.”

Specifically it calls for “designation of a point person and/or organic policy coordinator at the White House and in the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture for follow-through and on-going coordination. It also calls for “establishment of USDA cross-departmental and cross-agency cooperation through an organic working group . . . to expedite administrative backlogs and to implement fairly and swiftly the significant organic provisions of the 2008 farm bill.”

A similar recommendation is included in the National Organic Action Plan (NOAP) completed by organic food and farming stakeholders late last year following a series of 11 dialogue meetings held around the country.

The plan, entitled “From the Margins to the Mainstream: Advancing Organic Agriculture in the United States,” calls on USDA “to designate a point person and/or organic policy coordinator within the Secretary of Agriculture’s office to ensure follow-through and ongoing coordination and the solicitation of public input . . . and to establish and fully fund a cross-agency coordination hub whose role will be to facilitate the integration of these NOAP recommendations into government policies.”

Neither the NOC recommendation nor the more general NOAP call for action comes close to the comprehensive organic farming initiative recommended in the 1980 USDA report. But they provide a direct challenge to Secretary of Agriculure Tom Vilsack and the Obama White House.

If Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland could mobilize the entire USDA bureaucracy to rally in turning out the comprehensive 1980 report at a time when the agricultural establishment was filled with organic farming skeptics and critics, why can’t Secretary Vilsack at least take the modest step of appointing a USDA organic farming coordinator 30 years later when organic farming has been established as a farming alternative?

This is a valid question and one that organic farmers and their organizations should be pursuing until they get the right answer.

This article was first printed in the March/April 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Jan/Feb 2010

Recent trends in organic research suggest Midwest organic farmers may want to consider some new questions: Who are the scientists doing organic research in your state? What kind of research is being done? Are these researchers reaching out to involve you in their work? And are they making a special effort to share the results?

You may be interested in meeting the scientists at your land grant university and in helping shape the organic research being done. But the scientists doing the research also may be interested in meeting you and finding out what kind of research you think they should be doing. It’s no longer unusual for organic researchers and organic farmers to get together and compare notes.

A significant increase in organic research in the Midwest, and in the funding supporting it, is focusing new attention on farmer-friendly research approaches and on ways farmers and researchers can benefit from working together. Organic research proposals that include farmer involvement get extra points in the competition for government and foundation research grants.

Midwest Organic Researchers

Organic farmers may be surprised to learn that more than 200 university scientists and graduate students are involved in organic research in the 12 North Central states. Several of the region’s land grant universities have developed strong organic programs and organic research capacity. A recent survey identified 35 organic researchers at Michigan State University, 32 at the University of Wisconsin, 30 at the University of Minnesota, and 27 at Ohio State University.

It is becoming increasingly important to organic researchers to have access to certified organic land, either university owned or on organic farms, and to develop working relationships with certified organic farmers. These new partnerships make it possible for researchers and farmers to work together in developing organic research agendas, designing research projects, and conducting research on organic farms.

The relationship between organic farmers and extension specialists also is changing. There is a shift away from the conventional extension model where extension specialists refer farm production problems to researchers, researchers address the problems and generate new knowledge, and extension specialists bring the new knowledge back to farmers.

Because organic farming is knowledge intensive and involves a more complex learning process, organic farmers prefer a much more participatory system that has farmers, extension specialists, and researchers working together. This new approach also provides opportunities to partner with organic and sustainable agriculture organizations that disseminate research results through conferences, workshops, and other educational events.

Much of the credit for making farmers, extension specialists, and researchers more aware of the benefits of working together should go to USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and to the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), a nonprofit organization based in California.

Although only about 15 percent of SARE-funded research and education projects are organic specific, the farmer friendly approach this program has developed over 20 years of grantmaking is influencing the way organic research is done. “In SARE,” the agency’s website notes, “researchers at universities, in extension offices, on farms, and in nonprofit organizations have found a place to come together.”

Organic Research Had Bumpy Start

It was widely assumed as early as the 1970s that organic farmer involvement, including farmers doing research on their own farms, was critical in generating results that were practical, relevant, farmer friendly, and useful. It also was assumed that most researchers in the land grant university system were either clueless about organic farming or, worse yet, were biased against it.

That was one assumption in 1993 when a group of California organic farmers established OFRF to raise funds to support research that organic farmers would conduct on their own farms. They assumed research designed by farmers and carried out on certified organic farms would provide practical science-based answers to their production problems.

This approach was soon abandoned when it became clear that organic farmers had neither the time nor the research design expertise to do research on their own or to turn out project reports that could be widely shared. OFRF’s new approach, and the one followed now, emphasizes grower-researcher collaboration and research conducted on certified organic land.

OFRF also organized the Scientific Congress on Organic Agricultural Research (SCOAR), which brought organic farmers, researchers and others together to develop a national research agenda that catalogues and prioritizes organic research needs.

The national agenda project also developed guidelines for organic research that are widely supported and followed. These guidelines state that organic research should be conducted under certified organic conditions, involve organic producers as active team members, and emphasize multidisciplinary systems approaches rather than input-substitution approaches.

Organic Farmers Help Shape Funded Research Projects

The farmer-researcher partnership guidelines developed by SARE and OFRF are becoming the norm for both government and nonprofit organic research funding programs. The Organic Research Initiative of The Ceres Trust, for example, incorporated the guidelines into criteria used earlier this year in making competitive grants for organic research in the Midwest.

The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), a national grantmaking program that provides $19 million a year for research and extension, requires all project field work to be done on certified organic land or land in transition to organic certification. Project advisory panels that include organic farmers also are strongly encouraged. Applicants also must meet the program’s guidelines for organic farmer involvement.

“USDA expects that applicants will consult with organic producers before developing project proposals,” the OREI request for applications states. “Producers and/or processors should play an important role in developing project goals and objectives, in implementing the plan, and in evaluating and disseminating project results and outcomes.”

A related partnership challenge is how to bring organic farmers and organic researchers together at events where the results of this research collaboration are shared and discussed. There is a need for more research reporting opportunities at conferences, field days, workshops, and other events easily accessible to farmers.

Midwest Research Symposium

One successful new model was the Midwest Organic Research Symposium held in 2008 in La Crosse in conjunction with the Organic Farming Conference organized by Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services (MOSES) and the Organic Farming Research Foundation. Organic research reports and poster sessions authored by more than 100 scientists and graduate students were presented at this well-attended organic farming event.

The 2010 conference will bring farmers and researchers together again to share organic research results. This year research reports will be presented by organic researchers in six conference workshops. Research topics include weed seed predation, raising hogs in organic apple orchards, reducing tillage in organic vegetable operations, transitioning to organic production, ecological pest suppression in organic systems, and disease suppressive soils and composts.

Organic research still doesn’t get a fair share of the research funding available. But organic farmers, by taking advantage of opportunities to work more closely with organic researchers, are positioned to help make certain that the funding that is available supports project that address the problems they feel are most important.

This article was first printed in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Nov/Dec 2009

Is it possible organic integrity could become Priority Number One at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after all these years of inattentive oversight, lack of political support, lax and uneven enforcement, stingy appropriations, and poor management?

This could actually happen. The National Organic Program’s problems are being tackled one by one in a coordinated effort at USDA. The focus is on fixing a troubled program that has fallen short in meeting consumer expectations and failed to provide the organic sector benefits promised when the Organic Foods Production Act was passed 19 years ago.

The NOP also has repeatedly failed organic farmers with false starts and delays in issuing regulations needed to fully implement the 1990 law. More than 60 rulemaking and other recommendations produced by the National Organic Standards Board over several years are backed up at USDA with no schedule for followup. Decisions that need to be made are stalled, delayed, or postponed.

Probably the most serious is failure to complete a standard to guarantee real outdoor access to livestock, including pasture for dairy animals. The need for this standard was one of six priority issues identified in 1998 in the 278,000 public comments that forced USDA to withdraw the first proposed rule and rewrite it. Now, 11 years later, the organic pasture access standard is still not done.

It appears help is on the way. Important moves made over the last few months include agreeing to permit independent continuous outside oversight of the NOP, hiring an experienced organic program manager qualified to whip the NOP into shape, elevating the NOP to a stand-alone program within USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, and appointing five highly qualified new members to the 15-member NOSB.

NOP Moved Up in USDA Bureaucracy

The NOP also is getting more respect within the USDA bureaucracy. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has informed Congress that the NOP will no longer be stuck at the bottom of the chain of command in the Transportation and Marketiing Program at USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. He said upgrading the NOP to stand-alone program status under the AMS administrator will help support organic agriculture’s growth and ensure proper oversight and enforcement.

“Establishing the NOP as a stand-alone program area illustrates to the organic industry, Congress, and the public that the Department recognizes the importance of organic agriculture, supports its growth, and is committed to protecting the integrity of the organic label,” Vilsack told Congress.

The USDA actions have been accompanied by a strong vote of confidence from Congress, which appropriated more money for the NOP for Fiscal Year 2010 than anyone inside or outside of USDA had asked for. The new level of $6.978 million, more than double the amount provided a year earlier, is $300,000 more than the Administration asked for.

The extra $300,000, which was included in the conference committee report that cleared Congress and was sent to the President, had not been included in either the House or Senate agriculture appropriations bills. It is reported that the conferees took the unusual step of adding the extra funding “to enhance accreditation and oversight capabilities.”

More Important NOP Improvements Promised

More moves to shape up the organic program are promised. Included are writing and publishing a Quality Manual and a Policy Manual for the NOP’s accreditation program, finalizing the pasture rule and reducing the backlog of other delayed or postponed rulemaking recommendations, addressing issues related to organic fish and personal body care products and pet food standards, and stepping up enforcement of OFPA regulations.

All will require adding qualified professionals with organic expertise to the NOP’s staff to increase compliance and enforcement capability, draft regulations, make quality system improvements needed to obtain NIST recognition, and clean up NOP website misinformation and make other website improvements.

The planned changes, as well as those already made, are administrative moves carried out under existing authority. None of the needed improvements under active consideration are expected to require changes in the provisions of the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act or in the final implementation rule that went into effect seven years ago.

Miles McEvoy Named to Head NOP

Leading the new effort to shape up the NOP is Miles McEvoy, who took over as director of the new stand-alone NOP on October 1. He comes to USDA from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, where he has directed its highly-regarded

organic program since it was established more than 20 years ago. Washington’s state program now certifies more than 800 operators.

McEvoy was a founder of the National Association of State Organic Programs and has been serving as its president. He also has experience with global organic issues and opportunities, including serving on the Organic Trade Association’s Canada-U.S. Equivalency Task Force. Under his direction, the Washington State Organic Program has been accredited to IFOAM standards and criteria for several years by the International Organic Accreditation Service.

Most important to organic farmers and consumers and other organic food and farming advocates is McEvoy’s unwavering commitment to organic integrity, to enforcement of organic standards, and to provisions of the public/private partnership built into the 1990 law.

McEvoy will be challenged to help the NOP more fully realize its public/private partnership responsibilities in working with a stressed-out and unappreciated NOSB. Five highly-qualified new members, a new class of appointees named without drama or controversy, will join the NOSB in January. The OTA expressed pleasure with the new appointees and the Organic Consumers Association called them “the best in recent memory.”

New NOSB Members Named

The new members appointed to 5-year terms are environmentalist Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides; retailer Joe Dickson of Whole Foods; Oklahoma organic fruit and vegetable farmer Annette Riherd and Organic Valley livestock specialist Wendy Fulwider, and handler John Foster of Earthbound Farms in California.

Selecting these appointees suggests USDA has given up on appointing industry representatives to NOSB board slots reserved by law for consumer and other public interest representatives. Consumer representatives rebelled recently when Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns appointed industry representatives to fill two consumer slots on the NOSB. This raised troubling questions about USDA’s commitment to follow requirements of the 1990 law and protect the integrity of the NOSB’s decisionmaking process.

Another challenge will be relieving NOSB members of activities they should not be asked to do, such as conducting technical reviews of petitions to add materials to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. It is assumed that the NOP, under its new management, will no longer attempt to press busy unqualified NOSB members to conduct reviews or handle other tasks outside their job description.

Is the new USDA commitment to put organic integrity first at the NOP for real? There is every indication now that it is. But just as the organic community was feeling good about this likely outcome, it was jarred back to reality by an unexpected sour note:

Vilsack’s announcement that a Monsanto-connected biotechnology heavyweight had been named to head the new National Institute for Food and Agriculture at USDA. As one of his responsibilities In this new position, Robert Beachy, prominent biotechnology researcher and president of a Monsanto-sponsored plant science center, will oversee nearly $500 million in USDA competitive grants and other research funding.

This disappointing development suggests organic advocates will end up with a rehabbed NOP, an organic label that has organic integrity, and an influential industrial agriculture insider at USDA who has been brought in to promote biotechnology here and abroad. This is not the change we were hoping for.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · January, 2007

After seven long years of stonewalling to block independent review and oversight of its troubled organic program, it looks like the U.S. Department of Agriculture may have its hands full in the coming year with not one, but two, organic program audits.

A surprising decision by USDA to agree to an independent outside audit of its organic accreditation program by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was disclosed in July. Appropriations committees in both houses of Congress pressed ahead at the same time to provide $500,000 to USDA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to audit the operations of the National Organic Program (NOP).

USDA’s NIST audit decision was made public in a letter from Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan to the National Organic Coalition (NOC). The coalition proposed the NIST audit to the Obama Administration’s transition team in December and a NOC delegation followed up with a meeting with Merrigan in June. NOC, a coalition of organizations including Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, suggested the NIST review would fix USDA’s “flawed” organic accreditation program and satisfy the law’s controversial Peer Review Panel requirement at the same time.

Organic producers understand why audits are important. Their audits are the annual inspections used to verify their compliance with the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA). Producers also may be told to improve their systems as a condition of continuing their organic certification. The NIST audit would put the NOP under a similar system of annual surveillance and continuous improvement and help solve inconsistency and other implementation problems.

Merrigan’s letter to NOC stated that applying for and receiving NIST recognition will support the NOP’s credentials as an accreditation program and satisfy the organic law’s peer review requirements. “We understand the value of this step,” her letter said, “as we continue working to strengthen the integrity of the NOP and to building the organic community’s trust in the program.”

Why Peer Review Is a Big Deal

Why did Merrigan cite the need to meet the organic law’s peer review requirement and why is peer review still such a contentious issue? The reason is that organic farmers and others involved in shaping the 1990 organic law felt strongly that USDA could never be trusted to operate an organic program without public oversight.

They insisted, as a result, that the law include both the Peer Review Panel requirement and the National Organic Standards Board’s statutory authority over the national list of allowed and prohibited substances.

The requirements for peer review and USDA’s refusal to fully implement them despite Congressional prodding have been a source of contention for years. Senate report language in USDA appropriations bills in each of the last five years have called on USDA to establish the review panel called for in the 1990 law. This language appears again in the recently approved Senate version.

Why is the new NIST audit important to organic farmers and to the consumers who purchase organic food? One reason is the NOP accredits 98 certification bodies worldwide, making integrity issues crucial to consumer acceptance and to farmers needing assurance that organic soybeans and other competing imports meet U.S. organic standards. The list of NOP-accredited certification bodies includes 54 U.S.-based certifiers, including several that certify farms and processors overseas, and 44 foreign certifiers based in more than 20 countries. Lax oversight of certification agencies has become a pressing organic integrity issue for consumers aware of problems with food imports from China and other countries.

The NIST audit is important because it would require USDA’s accreditation program to have a quality manual that would clearly spell out procedures for dealing with certification and enforcement, require consistency in guidelines given to certification agencies and producers, provide continuous review of the manual, and provide oversight needed to make sure NOP personnel follow its requirements.

News Reports Undermine Consumer Confidence

The audit decision also may slow the growing number of national media reports critical of the NOP that organic farmers and others believe are undermining consumer confidence. USDA has been hit hard by stories reporting that organic standards have been relaxed and are unevenly applied, that it has failed to support the scientific analysis the NOSB needs to evaluate which substances and additives can be used in organic products, and that Washington influence peddlers working behind the scenes have been successful in getting the NOP to increase the number of substances and additives allowed.

The decision to seek NIST recognition also will put on hold the recent attempt by an NOSB committee to recommend an alternative peer review approach. The NOSB’s Compliance, Accreditation, and Certification Committee’s latest proposed approach would establish a special NOSB task force that would attempt to provide the kind of NOP oversight that the peer review process calls for. NOC urged the NOSB at the meeting to reject the committee’s task force approach and to seriously consider recommending the NIST approach instead.

The appropriations bills calling for providing the OIG with $500,000 to audit the operations of the NOP indicate that Congress has run out of patience with how the program is being run. The OIG funding was sponsored in the House by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and in the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and is expected to be in the USDA appropriations bill when it gets final approval later this year.

Holt’s House bill provision calls on the OIG “to determine whether the USDA organic certification program ensures that the most rigorous standards for certification are honored and to investigate whether non-organic substances inappropriately remain allowed in small amounts in USDA certified products after organic alternatives have been discovered.” This is a reference to the increase from 77 to 245 in the number of non-organic substances and additives now allowed in certified organic products.

Numerous Noncompliances in Previous Audits

The OIG audit presumably will be more comprehensive than an earlier audit that identified serious NOP operations problems. An additional audit of USDA’s organic accreditation program conducted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) six years ago turned up 21 noncompliances, including lack of a quality manual. Although both audits identified serious problems and made recommendations, neither the OIG nor ANSI had the authority to require USDA to make the corrections needed. .

The NOP at the time promised to implement the recommendations of the ANSI audit and bring the organic program into compliance. The NOP also expressed an interest in having an assessment of this kind on a regular basis but but there was no followup. Four years later Senate appropriators were still asking the NOP for “a detailed report to the Committee regarding progress in implementing these recommendations.”

The NIST audit, which will place the NOP under continuous outside surveillance and oversight, may be the most important organic policy development since the final rule went into effect in 2002. This rigorous audit, unlike the others, will require USDA to correct all the problems identified. It will force USDA to bring its organic accreditation program into conformity with international standards for management of accreditation programs for the first time and bring the NOP into compliance with the 1990 organic law.

The audit of USDA’s organic program, with NIST recognition as the hoped-for outcome, will get underway October 1, 2009 and is expected to take a year or more. USDA already has some NIST audit experience. The Audit, Review, and Compliance Branch of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service , which performs organic certifier audits, received NIST recognition in April for its ISO Guide 65 program. NIST recognition is for two years and the full audit process must be repeated each time it is renewed.

There is no reason why USDA should have anything less than a world class organic program. The NIST audit decision, the new Congressional commitment to shape up the NOP, and other changes USDA is making to support organic agriculture are important first steps. The challenge to organic farmers is to stay vigilant and keep the pressure on both USDA and Congress so the backsliding so common in Washington when attention lags will not undermine the progress being made.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · July/Aug, 2009

How does “Organic Farming: Good for Nature, Good for You” strike you as a new U.S. Department of Agriculture slogan? Or “Organic Farming: In Goodness We Trust”? Or even “Organic Farming: Wickedly Good”?

These nifty new government organic farming slogans are real and they’re out there. But, no surprise, they aren’t being put out there by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or any other U.S. government agency.

These are some of the European Commission’s new organic farming slogans. They convey the message that organic farming is popular in Europe, that the organic sector is supported by European governments and consumers alike, and that it is European Union policy to “ensure that official rules, programs, and plans regarding the organic sector are both widespread and sophisticated.”

This European commitment to support and promote organic farming stands out in sharp contrast to the U.S. government’s half-hearted, and mainly market-led, approach. The official U.S. position is that organic farming is a choice, but not the preferred choice, and that it is no better or no worse than any other kind of farming. No U.S. government slogans announce organic farming is “wickedly good.” Or that it’s good for you. Or even that it’s good for Nature.

This outdated little-commitment policy also contrasts with the European position that organic farming’s many public benefits should be officially acknowledged and that government policy should support and reward the organic farmers that provide them. The market support mechanisms approach that has had Congressional backing and the support of secretaries of agriculture from both political parties for 20 years or more is not working and should be replaced.

Market-Led vs. Government-Facilitated

Although the long-term results of these contrasting policy approaches are documented, they receive too little attention from U.S. policymakers and organic farming advocates. But lack of information isn’t the problem. Good information is available, for example, in an excellent Economic Research Service report published in 2005 and entitled “Market-Led Growth vs. Government-Facilitated Growth: Development of the U.S. and E.U. Organic Sectors.”

“Many E.U. countries have ‘green payments’ available for transitioning and continuing organic farmers, as well as a variety of other supply and demand policies aimed at promoting growth of the organic sector,” the report explained. “The U.S. government, in contrast, has largely taken a free market approach to the organic sector, and policy is aimed at facilitating market development.”

The Europeans have promoted organic farming since the 1970s. Green payments to transitioning and continuing organic farmers began early, and government funding for a full range of organic marketing, extension, education, and research programs has become the norm.

Although USDA recommended organic research and education initiatives in a 1980 report, it was suppressed by a new Administration the following year. Congress refused to support organic farming until 1990, when it chose the market-led approach in passing the Organic Foods Production Act. The focus was on standards and labeling and the implementation job was given to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. Provisions dropped from the legislation to gain votes needed for passage included a research section.

The ERS report includes good numbers showing the surprising and very different results of going down these two very different paths. This 2005 data showed that the European Union countries had four times as much land under organic management as the United States, that the percentage of farmland under organic management was four times greater in Europe than in the United States, and that the E.U. countries had 20 times as many organic farms (143,607 E.U. vs. 6,949 U.S.).

The 2007 Census of Agriculture showed U.S. certified organic farm numbers had increased to 9,926 two years later and that nearly 12,000 more farms were transitioning to organic, pointing to stronger future organic sector growth. But this continued slow growth still leaves the Europeans far in the lead and has led to demand for more and more organic imports to meet the growing U.S. market. More than 11,000 foreign organic producers and handlers, including large numbers from China, Italy and Mexico, are certified now by USDA-accredited certification organizations and provide an ever expanding flow of exports to this country.

The E.U. countries also invested heavily in organic research and extension. USDA’s National Agricultural Library has reported that a literature search in 2006 showed that 68 percent of the world’s organic research so far had been conducted in Europe. The same report showed only 10 percent was done by U.S. researchers.

Although there are few things U.S. officials like less than admitting anything the Europeans do regarding agriculture might actually be better, new developments in Washington suggest official attitudes toward organic food and farming policy are improving. Changes in attitude had a positive influence on the outcome of the 2008 farm bill and are helping mobilize political support for some important new USDA organic farming initiatives.

Policy Breakthrough a Real Possibility

The good news is that a broad organic policy breakthrough appears to be a real possibility. There are definite indications that the federal government’s approach to organic policymaking is shifting slowly but surely away from reliance on a market-led approach and toward the more generous government-facilitated model that supports organic farmers in Europe and has helped build its thriving organic food and farming sector.

The new 5-year farm bill enacted last year included important new provisions providing financial support to farmers to convert to organic production. An increase in mandatory funding to more than $100 million supports the national certification cost-share program and an organic data initiative and increases mandatory organic research funding five-fold from levels mandated in 2002. New priority research areas include conservation and environmental outcomes of organic production, development of new and improved seed varieties for use in organic production systems, and organic farming’s potential to help alleviate global warming by capturing atmospheric carbon and storing it in the soil.

Other provisions aimed at facilitating organic sector growth included technical assistance to farmers adopting organic conservation practices, funding to expand data collection on organic production and marketing, more support for USDA’s National Organic Program, inclusion of organic commodities in a cost-share funding program to expand U.S. agricultural markets, and a study aimed at eliminating organic production insurance coverage restrictions.

One of the most significant improvements aimed at increasing the number of organic farmers is new provisions of USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) that make conservation practices related to organic production and the transition to organic production eligible for payments of up to $20,000 a year.

This provision, not unlike the highly successful European green payments, has already been implemented at USDA with a $50 million first-year program. It was so well received that application deadlines in most states had to be extended. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan also has pledged that organic will now be integrated across all agencies at USDA “and that each and every agency should have some engagement with the organic sector.” She also pointed to USDA’s first ever wide-scale survey of organic farming and said survey results will be used to shape organic policies and priorities.

It appears USDA may now have all the information it would need to put out an “Organic Farming: Good for Nature” slogan. A new ERS report concludes that environmental benefits that can be attributed to organic production systems include reduced pesticide residues in water and food; reduced nutrient pollution; improved soil tilth, soil organic matter, and productivity; lower energy use; sequestration of carbon, and enhanced biodiversity.

It’s unlikely USDA will get into the organic slogan business. But it is time for the new Obama people at USDA to consider following the lead of the Europeans and assuring Americans that organic farming is good for Nature, good for you, and maybe even “wickedly good.” It’s time to push Congress to continue to do more to support programs and policies that expand the organic sector, reduce dependence on organic imports, and reward organic farmers for the many public benefits they provide.

And, finally, it’s time for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to begin acknowledging the many benefits of organic farming and to lead USDA into the future by announcing that organic should be a farming preference, not merely a farming choice, and that it’s good for Nature and good for you.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the July/Aug 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · May/June, 2009

An important development in the rush to put new policy agendas in the hands of the Obama transition team is the inclusion of more support for organic farming in a list of green action priorities put forward by the nation’s most politically active environmental and conservation organizations.

The fact that 29 national organizations reached consensus on important organic farming issues and made a commitment to support changes to help expand the organic farming sector is significant. It suggests, among other things, increased recognition by these influential organizations of the important environmental benefits that organic farmers are providing. The organizations worked together over several months developing this set of recommended administrative, legislative, and budget policy actions. The introduction to the 391-page document said it highlights priority environmental recommendations for the Obama Administration transition team that the coalition of environmental and conservation groups has endorsed.

The timing couldn’t be better for including support for organic farming in a new green agenda. President Obama promised a stronger focus on renewable energy and environmental stewardship issues during the campaign and environmentalists are pleased with his appointments so far. They liked his critical take on hog factories during the primaries, for example, and he is viewed as being generally supportive of organic agriculture.

In addition to supporting specific changes needed to strengthen the organic farming sector, the environmental policy agenda also includes strong positions in other areas important to organic farmers. These include high priority recommendations dealing with natural resource conservation, biodiversity, regulation of genetically engineered crops, support for classical seeds and breeds research, and restoration of pesticide use data collection and reporting.

Recommendations Target USDA Agencies

Although the “Transition to Green” document the environmental and conservation organizations put forward focuses much of its attention on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, more than 40 pages deal directly with U.S. Department of Agriculture agencies. The USDA recommendations, for the most part, call for policy and program changes by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Service Agency (FSA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), and Research, Extension, and Economics.

The coalition of organizations did not attempt to address organic integrity and other National Organic Program issues related to the way USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has been running the Organic Foods Production Act. These issues, however, have been covered in detail in other program and policy agendas submitted to the Obama transition team by the National Organic Coalition and other organic advocacy organizations.

Probably the most significant organic agenda item in the “Transition to Green” document submitted to the transition team is a call for providing a “fair share” of USDA resources for organic and sustainable agriculture research and extension. Specific priorities identified include more funding for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) and ATTRA programs, promotion of genetic diversity through investment in public plant and animal breeding, and more support for research on organic agriculture and antibiotic free livestock production.

“Organic agriculture provides multiple environmental benefits, such as clean water and air, but has traditionally been underfunded by USDA research and extension programs,” the document states. “The new Administration should increase funding for organic research, extension, and data collection activities at USDA agencies to $25 million in the first budget it sends to Congress and then dramatically increase funding for these activities in subsequent years to a level that is at or near the fully authorized level.”

Seeds and Breeds Research

The need to provide more funding for development of public plant varieties and animal breeds also was highlighted as a priority research area. “The result of the decline in public investment in classical seeds and breeds is a loss of genetic diversity,” the document noted. “This problem is particularly acute for organic farmers and sustainable farmers whose systems depend so heavily on local adaptation of plants and animals to unique soils and pest conditions and the changing climate of these areas.”

Another highlighted area is the need to restore the ability of the National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) to provide regular and frequent reports on the use of agricultural chemicals. NASS has collected and published agricultural chemical use data since 1991 but funding cuts have resulted in a dramatically scaled-back effort in recent years.

The environmental agenda called for funding levels needed to restore the agency’s ability to collect data and publish these reports. The specific recommendation calls on NASS to “reinstate its program of the 1990s, which involved surveys of chemical use annually on major field crops, periodically on other field crops, and biennially on fruit and vegetable crops.”

The green agenda report warns that genetically engineered (GE) and genetically modified (GMO) crops “pose a long list of risks” to health, the environment, and trade, including the proliferation of herbicide-tolerant weeds and the movement of hormones and other bioactive drugs into the food supply. It calls for APHIS to stop promulgation of a weak rule proposed by the Bush Administration, to prepare an environmental impact statement disclosing GMO health and environmental risks, and to support a ban on using food crops for the production of pharmaceutical and industrial compounds.

“Under the current regulatory regime,” the report stated, “the risks associated with GE and GMO crops have not been seriously addressed by APHIS, one of three principal agencies charged with the oversight of these crops.”

Support for Transition to Organic Systems

The green agenda calls on the new Administration to provide support needed to realize the full potential of new provisions of the Environmental Quality Improvement (EQIP) program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. NRCS, it states, should “provide national leadership” to ensure that these programs have the capacity to promote both integrated pest management and organic production systems. This section of the report stated that effective implementation by NRCS of new farm bill provisions to assist farmers interested in transitioning to organic agriculture, including national availability and technical assistance, should be given a high priority by the new Obama Administration.

The nine national environmental and conservation organizations that provided leadership in preparing green recommendations involving USDA agencies are the Union of Concerned Scientists, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, Izaak Walton League, Earthjustice, World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council. Several were involved in shaping the Organic Foods Production Act and pushing it through Congress in 1990, in convincing Congress to reserve slots for environmental representatives on the National Organic Standards Board, and in joining organic farming advocates in forcing USDA to withdraw its flawed first proposed rule and issue the rewritten version that is still not fully implemented.

All of the environmental and conservation organizations that have endorsed the new agenda are expected to provide continuing political support and oversight for organic farming and other USDA green agenda recommendations. Others not involved in preparing the green agenda, such as Wild Farm Alliance and Defenders of Wildlife, also are reliable organic farming supporters.

Having national environmental and conservation organizations supporting organic agriculture is good news for organic farmers because these organizations understand the value of things like cover crops and crop rotations, natural habitat for beneficial insects, the role of organic matter in providing fertility and sequestering carbon, and farming practices that produce comparable yields without synthetic fertilizer and other farm chemicals.

The 391-page green plan deals in detail with agriculture and all the other elements of the difficult and complicated global environmental problem that confronts all of us concerned about saving our planet. The organizations that shaped this plan and put it forward should be commended and thanked for making it clear to the new Obama Administration that organic farming is part of the solution.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the May/June 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · March/April, 2009

The 2007 Census of Agriculture, the first to include detailed national information on both the number and size of farms under organic management and the number in transition to organic, provides new evidence organic agriculture is holding its own as one of American agriculture’s fastest growing sectors.

The number of certified organic farms reported by the Census of Agriculture is generally consistent with the numbers in the organic farming reports issued every year since 2001 by USDA’s Economic Research Service. The Census numbers come from information gathered from farmers. The well-regarded ERS reports are based on information gathered from USDA-accredited certifiers.

Both sets of numbers show growth in the organic farming sector in the Midwest overall. And states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa continue to rank high nationally in terms of the number of certified organic farmers and the number of acres under organic management.

The new Census data shows that 18,211 organic farms had organic sales of $1.7 billion from production on 2.58 million acres in 2007. However the number of organic farms, the largest ever documented, is less significant than these numbers would indicate because it seems clear that only 9,926 were certified. The other 8,285 reported less than $5,000 in sales of organically produced commodities and, under provisions of the Organic Foods Production Act, did not have to be certified.

Even though these numbers reflect continued growth, the 18,211 organic farms counted in the Census are still less than one percent of the new official total of 2.2 million U.S. farms. The new Census numbers show an increase of four percent in the number of U.S. farms over the last five years. A farm must have at least $1,000 in sales to be counted by the Census and small, part-time operations account for much of the increase.

Transitioning Farms Counted for First Time

Probably the most surprising number reported by the new Census is the 11,901 farms that were transitioning 616,358 acres to organic production in 2007. It is surprising because no good numbers have been available until now on the number of transitioning farms or the number of acres involved. It is encouraging because this number suggests a significant increase in the number of farmers switching to organic and stronger future growth in the organic farming sector.

What is missing in analyzing this new 2007 Census data is comparable numbers for 2002 that would help show all the organic farming changes that have taken place over the last five years. The 2002 Census of Agriculture, the first conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the first to recognize organic agriculture as a separate category, did not generate a lot of comparable data because it included only two questions related to organic farming.

The limited data collected by the 2002 Census showed there were about 12,000 organic farms five years ago with sales of about $393 million. It also showed that organic agriculture was still a small niche in U.S. agriculture. Only 0.6 percent of U.S. farms sold organic products in 2002, only 0.2 percent of total U.S. farm sales were certified as organic, and nearly half of all organic sales came from relatively large organic farms.

Congress Puts USDA in Charge of Census of Agriculture

Congress in 1997 transferred responsibility for the Census of Agriculture from the Bureau of the Census, which had done an agricultural census since 1840, to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS). Unlike the Bureau of the Census, which had declined to include organic farming questions, NASS agreed that the Census, starting in 2002, would gather information “meaningful to organic producers.”

NASS adopted a series of advisory board recommendations calling for 2007 Census of Agriculture questions covering acres used for organic production, separate information breakouts for organic cropland and organic pastureland, both the number of farms and the number of acres being converted to organic, and separate information breakouts for the value of sales for crops, for livestock and poultry, and for livestock and poultry products.

Congress supported this move to include more organic questions in the 2007 Census of Agriculture and encouraged NASS “to take all necessary steps, including a followup survey, to collect in-depth coverage on acreage, yield, production, inventory, production practices, sales and expenses, marketing channels and demographics of the organic industry.”

NASS also reached out for some expert organic farming advice. The 25-member national agricultural statistics advisory board convened by NASS after taking over the Census includes Karen Klonsky, a University of California at Davis professor and prominent organic researcher. She serves on the California Department of Food and Agriculture Organic Program Advisory Board.

The 2007 Census numbers are not the first well-researched government organic farming numbers. When NASS took over the Census and started collecting organic farming information in 2002, USDA’s Economic Research Service already was fathering and analyzing organic farming statistics.

NOP Clueless Before 2001 About Organic Farming Numbers

Prior to 2003 when the ERS published its first report on U.S. organic farming, policymakers and others had to rely largely on government and industry estimates and a series of farmer surveys done by the Organic Farming Research Foundation to find out what was happening in the organic sector. As late as 2000, when the final rule implementing the Organic Foods Production Act was proposed, the National Organic Program was still clueless regarding how many certified farmers would be impacted, where they were located, and how much land was under organic management.

Starting with a report entitled “U.S. Organic Farming in 2000-2001: Adoption of Certified Systems” and published early in 2003, the ERS has reported certified farm numbers based on information gathered from 53 state and private accredited certifiers. These well-documented numbers are 6,592 certified farmers in 2000, 6,949 in 2001, 7,323 in 2002, 8,035 in 2003, 8,021 in 2004, and 8,493 in 2005. Completion of the next ERS organic farming sector update, expected to cover 2006 and 2007, was scheduled for late 2008 and publication early this year is expected.

2008 Farm Bill Provides Data Collection Funding

Prior to passage of the 2008 farm bill, getting funding for organic data collection was difficult. Although the 2002 Organic Production and Marketing Data Initiative authorized some special funding, very little materialized. Much of the organic data work done by the ERS has been funded by a $500,000 annual appropriation.

The 2008 farm bill has changed all that. In addition to reauthorizing the 2002 data initiative, the new farm bill provides $5 million in mandatory funding over five years for organic data collection and analysis. AMS is to receive $3.5 million of the total for things like organic price reporting and the balance is to be split between NASS and ERS. In addition, ERS is expected to continue to receive $500,000 for organic data gathering and analysis annually through the appropriations process.

It’s reassuring to have solid data showing organic agriculture is maintaining its niche as one of U.S. agriculture’s fastest growing sectors. But is this good enough? Census numbers showing fewer than 10,000 certified organic farmers and less than one percent of the nation’s agricultural land under organic management in 2007, 36 years after the first U.S. organic certifier opened for business, suggests it is not.

Organic sector growth since the Organic Foods Production Act was implemented has not been strong enough to avoid creating a huge opening for organic imports. This production is coming in from low-cost foreign producers certified by NOP-accredited bodies and eager to compete with U.S. organic farmers for this country’s $16 billion organic market. Good organic import numbers are not available due to the government’s inability to track them. But preliminary USDA estimates show this market penetration is well underway and that the value of organic imports into this country already far exceeds the value of U.S. organic exports.

A statement available in the ERS briefing room notes ominously that organic production is expanding in developed and developing countries alike and that competition for major consumer markets in developed countries is heating up. Organic farmers in many of these countries, especially in Asia, are receiving serious government support to help them target expanding organic markets here and elsewhere.

All of this strongly suggests it is time to consider retiring the so-called market driven approach to organic policymaking that limits government support for organic farming in this country and replace it with the European government-assisted model that supports continued and consistent organic expansion. What’s not to like about an approach that compensates organic farmers for the many environmental and other public benefits they provide and that has enabled some European countries to bring up to 10 per cent of their farms under organic management? A new approach like this may well be the change that is needed.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the March/April 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Jan/Feb 2009

When President-Elect Barak Obama takes office in January, he becomes the fourth president challenged to fully implement the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act and to develop and support a National Organic Program that supports organic farmers, meets consumer expectations, and guarantees organic integrity. He succeeds three presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, who have failed to get this done.

It is important and timely, as a result, to challenge the incoming Obama Administration to finish what has been left undone after 18 years. The public-private partnership Congress promised when it took control of organic agriculture away from farmers, consumers, and others and gave it to the U.S. Department of Agriculture has not been fully realized. Consumer expectations crucial to continued expansion of the organic food and farming sector still are not being met.

It is tempting to prepare a memo to the incoming administration patterned on the “Sixty-Six Points of Darkness” report the organic community developed to document flaws in the first proposed organic rule and mobilize opposition that forced USDA to rewrite it. Some deficiencies listed more than 10 years ago in that report still have not been fixed. But dwelling on problems left over from the past would distract from today’s larger challenges.

Specific Organic Policy Changes Needed

What organic farmers, consumers, and other organic farming supporters need from the Obama White House is a commitment to significant improvement in how OFPA is being implemented, how the NOP is being funded, and how it is being run. These are 10 organic policy and administrative improvements President-Elect Obama’s Administration needs to make to meet his campaign commitment to “provide the change that is needed”:

Nominate a Secretary of Agriculture who supports organic agriculture, acknowledges its many public benefits, rejects the USDA line that organic is merely a choice no better or worse than any other kind of agriculture, and works to restore the organic farming coordinator position at USDA.

Its only organic coordinator was fired 27 years ago. Having most USDA organic decisions made near the bottom of the chain of command by the deputy administrator of Transportation and Marketing Programs at USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service is no longer good enough.

Put enough money in the President’s budget each year to fund the NOP at a level that enables it to meet its Congressionally-mandated responsibilities.

President Bush requested $3.98 million for Fiscal 2009, more than before but much less then needed, and less than the $6 million the National Organic Coalition and other organic supporters urged Congress to provide. The 2007 farm bill authorized large annual NOP budget increases through 2012. Congress, in authorizing these funding increases, cited concerns raised by numerous agricultural interests “about the level of resources devoted to the NOP.”

Establish a timeline for USDA to respond to more than 50 unacknowledged NOSB rulemaking and other recommendations filed away since 2002 when the final rule took effect.

When the NOP fumbled a grower group problem recently and seemed to have no idea how to fix it, for example, it was reminded that the NOSB several years earlier had completed a comprehensive grower group recommendation that was gathering dust at USDA. USDA contends it has no obligation under provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) to accept, reject, or acknowledge NOSB recommendations. This violates both the intent and the spirit of the national organic law and needs to be overturned. Eliminating this huge backlog of recommendations will show respect for the NOSB, which is in short supply at USDA, and demonstrate compliance with the advisory process mandated by Congress.

Direct USDA to implement the peer review provision of the Organic Foods Production Act and bring the NOP into compliance with international guidelines for organic accreditation bodies.

This 18-year-old provision calls for a panel of experts, including representatives of the organic community, to provide oversight of the NOP’s accreditation process and to review its accreditation decisions. Despite appropriations bill reports every year since 2002 urging implementation, USDA has refused to comply. The NOSB is addressing this now with a compromise that would allow oversight to be provided by an outside audit and review body empowered to assess performance of the accreditation program and require compliance with international norms. The new Administration should direct USDA to initiate rulemaking to implement this approach.

Increase USDA oversight of foreign operations of more than 40 U.S. and foreign certifiers accredited by the NOP as well as certifiers accredited by foreign government entitles in six countries that have recognition agreements with USDA.

The NOP has struggled to complete even one on-site auditor visit per certifier during its initial 5-year period of accreditation and has failed in most cases to conduct additional foreign visits. At least 12,000 foreign organic operators exporting to the U.S., including grower groups with hundreds of small farmers, are certified by NOP-accredited entities. Lax oversight of these certifiers has become a pressing organic integrity issue for consumers aware of problems with food imports from China and other countries. The latest estimates show organic imports far exceed organic exports and play a significant role in this country’s organic market expansion.

Require the U.S. Department of Commerce to add a series of organic codes to the hundreds of 10-digit internationally harmonized codes used now to track and report U.S. food imports.

So far Canada is the only country that has expanded its code number system to provide identification and reporting of organic imports. USDA, on the other hand, has no official information on how much organic food is imported, whether it is soybeans or bananas or something else, and what country it comes from. Organic imports, like all food imports, pass through the Food and Drug Administration’s failing food safety system that inspects only one percent of the food coming into this country.

Include organic agriculture components in all new federal initiatives, especially those involving energy and climate change.

A growing body of research shows organic systems use one-third less fossil fuel energy than conventional systems, with much of the savings coming from avoiding synthesized nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides made from natural gas and other fossil fuel inputs. Other research shows that organic systems, which use cover crops and composted manure and legume-based rotations to build up organic matter levels in the soil, help mitigate global warming by sequestering more carbon than conventional farming methods. Converting the 160 million acres of corn and soybeans in the U.S. to organic production, the Rodale Institute has reported, would sequester enough additional carbon to more than wipe out U.S. agriculture’s massive emission deficit.

Make certain that USDA no longer appoints industry representatives to NOSB board slots reserved by law for consumer and other public interest representatives.

Consumer organizations rebelled recently when Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns appointed industry representatives to fill two consumer slots on the 15-member NOSB. This raised questions about USDA’s commitment to enforce OFPA legal requirements and protect the integrity of the NOSB’s decisionmaking process. The individuals selected may be appropriate to serve in the industry-related slots on the NOSB, the nation’s leading consumer organizations told Johanns. But their joint letter contended it is misleading “to have them represent the interests of consumers and the public interest.” What the organic community proposed 10 years ago, and is still needed, is an NOSB resolution establishing membership criteria and NOSB appointment guidelines that protect the integrity of all designated NOSB slots.

Direct the NOP to avoid decisions that undermine consumer confidence and generate unfavorable media reports about organic integrity.

The NOP’s attempt to get busy unqualified NOSB members to agree to conduct technical reviews of petitions to add materials to the National List of substances allowed in organic production is a recent example. Another is media reports critical of a fish standards rule USDA is considering that would set aside the 100 percent organic feed requirement and allow a water polluting cage-based production system. It has resulted in a highly publicized challenge by a coalition of consumer and environmental groups that want only fish that eat 100 percent organic feed and are produced in closed production systems to be eligible to be certified as organic. What is needed is decisions that build consumer confidence and make organic integrity “job one” at USDA.

Retire the so-called market-driven approach to organic policymaking that is the basis for organic sector support in the U.S. and replace it with the European government-assisted model that has resulted in substantial and consistent organic sector expansion there.

Providing government assistance has public support because it rewards organic farmers for the environmental, energy-saving, and other public benefits they provide. The European Union’s reward system for years has included transition payments, dedicated organic research institutes, market expansion programs, and organic farming extension workers. In some EU countries, as a result, 10 percent or more of their farms are under organic management.

Neither Congress nor USDA have ever seriously considered proposing national organic sector goals or objectives, which European countries include in their national action plans, or considered proposing a vision for organic agriculture. The National Organic Action Plan being prepared by the U.S. organic community, which proposes goals and objectives and includes a vision for the future of organic agriculture, poses a timely and significant organic challenge for U.S. agricultural policymakers. The new Obama Administration will be asked early next year to acknowledge, and hopefully to support, this national participatory initiative. This organic action plan will include policy recommendations for a much-needed organic program upgrade at USDA and provide the new Administration with timely organic guidelines for “the change that is needed”.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Nov/Dec 2008

Less than six months after making farm bill funding for cost share and organic research programs mandatory, the Bush Administration is pressuring Congress to “chimp” mandatory organic research and education funding and turn almost half of this “guaranteed” 2009 funding over to USDA for computer upgrades and other data processing purposes.

Under direct attack is mandatory funding for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), the premier organic research and education initiative in the farm bill signed into law last summer. OREI received an increase in mandatory funding from $15 million over five years in the 2002 farm bill to $78 million over five years in the 2008 farm bill. This increase in organic research funding still falls far short of an organic fair share of the $2 billion per year USDA spends on research.

The Administration proposal, which came in a revised Fiscal Year 2009 budget request submitted to Congress August 1, would strip $8 million out of the $18 million in mandatory organic research and education funding for 2009. An earlier Administration proposal called for eliminating all organic research and education funding . The Senate Appropriations Committee has already undermined the mandatory status of this new OREI funding by caving in to pressure from the Administration and agreeing to a $2 million “chimp.”

For those involved in the successful push for mandatory federal funding for organic research in the farm bill, “chimping” is government speak for a procedure for raiding guaranteed program funding. The official term for this official method of taking funds away from mandatory programs is Change In Mandatory Programs or CHIMP. Capitol Hill insiders refer to these raids on mandatory funding as “chimping” or being “chimped.”

Among other things, this involves the continuing struggle between the agriculture committees that put the farm bill together and the appropriations subcommittees that follow up by setting USDA spending levels. It was not surprising, as a result, to hear House Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson (D-MN) tell a national television interviewer recently that he was not happy about the way appropriators were “chimping” mandatory funding provided in the new farm bill.

It is important to be wary, maybe even cynical, about funding levels authorized in farm bills. Appropriated levels are almost always much less than the authorized levels and new programs, or programs like OREI and cost share that receive substantial increases, can become easy targets during highly-politicized budget-cutting raids. The appropriations committees can, and often do, resist new policy directions and turn “greened up” farm bills into big disappointments.

Politics is clearly involved in this attempt by USDA, which has started implementing a massive farm bill, to raid a tiny $18 million organic research and education program rather than find money for computer upgrades elsewhere in the subsidy-loaded $296 billion farm bill. Unlike funding for organic programs, which lacks support from big money campaign contributors and K Street lobbyists, most farm bill subsidy and other multi-billion-dollar programs are heavily lobbied and protected politically by influential farm and commodity organizations and agribusiness interests.

Certification cost share, the other important organic program in the farm bill with mandatory funding, has $22 million in guaranteed funding over five years. It has escaped, at least for now, the Administration’s “chimping” ambush. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which administers this program, announced several weeks ago that it plans to move cost share money out to the states for distribution.

Raid on Organic Research Funding is Challenged

So what is being done to stop this raid on organic research and education funding? One attempt has been initiated by the Organic Farming Research Foundation, which led the successful effort to increase OREI funding and make it mandatory. Since bills appropriating funds to USDA for 2009 are still stalled in Congress and won’t be finalized until a new Administration takes over next year, there is still time to reverse this ‘chimping’ attempt.

In a letter in late August to Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer and James Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, OFRF pointed out that the proposed cut is at odds with both the Congressional intent in enacting the farm bill and recommendations related to organic that were submitted to Schafer and Congressional appropriations committees in March by the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Economics Advisory Board.

“The Board commends the research, education, and extension agencies for taking the initiative to address this emerging and increasingly important (organic) segment of the food supply chain,” the advisory board stated in making its recommendations, “and encourages further development of its programs relative to organic agriculture . . .”

OFRF noted that the farm bill called for increasing investment in existing organic programs and also included new efforts to integrate organic agriculture into USDA’s ongoing conservation programs. The return on this investment, OFRF’s letter emphasized, requires adequate investment in research and education to support successful organic systems.

“Congress even added a purpose to the OREI to spur research into ‘examining optimal conservation and environmental outcomes relating to organically produced agricultural products’,” the letter noted. “This provision will help to facilitate proper implementation and ensure maximum benefit of the new conservation provisions supporting organic agriculture.”

High Demand for Organic Research Funding

It became clear in the follow up to the 2002 farm bill that the $3 million a year provided for organic research and education would not be nearly enough to fund the many proposals submitted. Only 29 out of the 210 proposals considered were approved under organic research and education provisions of the 2002 farm bill. The total provided for these competitive grants, awarded mostly to land grant university scientists by USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), was only about one percent of all USDA research and education funding.

Midwest universities awarded competitive organic research and education grants included the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, the University of Nebraska, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois. One of the grants supported the Midwest Organic Research Symposium sponsored by Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) and OFRF last February in conjunction with the Organic Farming Conference. More than 40 scientists and graduate students, the majority from the Midwest, presented organic research papers and posters.

How can an agency like USDA with more than $2 billion in funding for research and $60 billion in funding overall for the current fiscal year justify grabbing nearly half of the funding from a new mandatory $18 million organic research and education program to pay for computer upgrades? This action clearly demonstrates bias against organic farming by political appointees at USDA and action is needed to get the agency to abandon this raid on organic funding.

It is unlikely that Schaefer or Nussle or anyone else in the Bush Administration can be pressured enough to back away from this raid on a mandatory organic research initiative. It probably doesn’t matter anyway since the Bush Administration has less than 90 days left in office. A new president will be in the White House when the final decisions regarding appropriations committee “chimping” are made.

No matter what happens between now and when a new president takes office, the new ORE initiative has already taken a hit in terms of the availability of funding. The uncertainty about the program’s funding is almost sure to delay the call for proposals from the normal end of December release date until sometime in the spring.

Those who want this raid on organic funding reversed should turn their attention now to Capitol Hill and target members of the agriculture appropriations subcommittees in both houses of Congress. The subcommittees are headed by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), both considered organic farming supporters. These subcommittees will put the final touches on the USDA budget that is sent to a new president early next year. It would seem appropriate, too, to seek help from members of the House Organic Caucus in trying to kill this proposed cut.

The struggle for organic research funding in this country has continued with little success for more than 35 years. The first significant funding breakthrough was made with the Integrated Organic Program (IOP) in 2002. The 2007 farm bill, which built on experience gained over several years of IOP grantmaking, finally provided an organic research and education program with mandatory funding and enough money to begin making a difference.

It is time to force USDA to look someplace else for its computer upgrade money. Organic farmers and consumers and others who support organic farming can no longer afford to be spectators in the continuing political effort to obtain, and then to protect, the organic research and education initiatives in the new farm bill.

Failure to take a stand will send a political signal to USDA, the Office of Management and Budget, the agriculture appropriations committees in Congress, and others that the organic community lacks both the interest and the political clout to stop raids on organic research and education funding. This is an unacceptable outcome that the organic food and farming sector will live to regret.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Sept/Oct 2008

The authority Congress gave the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to help define organic and guarantee organic integrity is being seriously eroded by National Organic Program (NOP) actions involving approval of materials for the National List of substances allowed in organic production.

Worse yet the NOSB, which was mandated by Congress to evaluate these materials and make recommendations to the Secretary of Agriculture, has failed to challenge the NOP’s recent actions and is caving in to pressure to go along with possibly unlawful changes. This has led to suggestions that the entire substances approval process is breaking down and that a moratorium on additions to the National List should be imposed until the National List approval system is fixed.

Although National List issues have been troubling since the Organic Foods Production Act was amended in response to a recent court decision, they were dramatized at the last NOSB meeting in Baltimore during a discussion of when technical advisory panel (TAP) reviews should be done and who should do them. A list of 25 new petitioned materials to be added to the National List, an unusually large number, were on the meeting agenda for review.

The TAP reviews, which have been contracted out to the Organic Materials Research Institute (OMRI) and several universities and nonprofit organizations, provide NOP-funded outside scientific reviews of petitioned substances. The law states that TAP review panels should include agronomists, entomologists, toxicologists, and others with expertise needed to evaluate each petitioned material.

Reviews Apply ‘Do No Harm’ Criteria

Criteria considered by TAP review panels include whether the material has an adverse impact on human health, whether it is compatible with a system of sustainable agriculture, whether the toxicity and mode of action of the substance and its breakdown products persists in the environment, and whether it has an adverse impact on biological and chemical interactions in agroecosystems.

These legally required contracted reviews have not always turned out well. Concern has been expressed for five years or more about incomplete or inadequate TAP reviews that have delayed petitioned substance decisions by the NOSB. There also has been disagreement over how TAP contractors are selected and whether the NOSB has a right to participate in making these decisions.

Public Witnesses Oppose Change

The NOP told the Baltimore meeting that the government could save time and money by having the NOSB, rather than outside contracted experts, do TAP reviews. Although public witnesses urged the NOSB to oppose this change and other government actions that appeared to be undermining its National List authority, the NOSB declined to challenge the NOP’s position. It ignored the public comments and agreed that its Policy Committee would develop a procedure for deciding which materials petitions would require an “outside” TAP review.

Public witnesses opposing the NOP’s new TAP review position included Emily Brown Rosen, a nationally-recognized organic materials expert, who commented on behalf of Pennsylvania Certified Organic, an NOP-accredited certifier. She contended having the NOSB do TAP reviews was not what Congress intended and that it also failed to meet expectations of the organic community.

“The NOSB’s work requires expertise on hundreds of different subjects and, in order for you to do a professional job, you deserve technical support,” she told NOSB members during a public comment period. “You have the authority to refuse to evaluate materials when there is no credible TAP review, and you should preserve that authority.”

A statement submitted by the National Organic Coalition (NOC) called for a moratorium on National List decisions until the NOP follows the law regarding the role of the NOSB and clears up several materials review issues. These include the NOP’s failure to respond to public comments about 38 non-organic agricultural substances that recently were allowed in organic food, most of them without TAP reviews, on the grounds they are commercially available in organic form or are extremely difficult to source. The statement also called on the NOSB to clarify the definition of “synthetic,” a fundamental criterion for inclusion on the National List.

NOC’s written statement acknowledged that the NOP and the NOSB are under industry pressure to move faster in making National List decisions. “We respect and admire the efforts carried out by the NOSB to prevent disruption of the organic industry,” it said. “However, without independent objective TAP reviews, the NOSB cannot make an informed recommendation on materials petitioned for inclusion on the National List. In fact it may be illegal to do so.” Liana Hoodes, speaking for NOC during the comment period, told the NOSB that it is important that all the steps set out in the law are followed to assure that the NOSB process demonstrates integrity and consistency in making its decisions. The NOC statement was signed by 11 national and regional consumer, organic farming, and other organizations and institutions.

The controversy over TAP reviews may appear to some as little more than a “tempest in a teapot” involving industry pressure, NOP budget woes, and materials most consumers have never heard of. But a look back to 1990 when the Organic Foods Production Act was enacted shows how much is at stake when NOSB’s statutory authority in the materials review process is threatened or eroded and how critical it is to bring the entire review process into compliance with the law.

The NOSB was established in response to widely-shared apprehension in 1990 about turning over responsibility for a national organic guarantee from the private sector to regulation by USDA. It reflected deep distrust of the department, which had joined the House Agriculture Committee in waging a bitter unsuccessful fight against the Organic Foods Production Act. If an institution like the NOSB with some statutory authority had not been included, this legislation would never have made it through Congress.

USDA Challenges to NOSB Authority Failed Earlier

USDA on two occasions in the past has been unsuccessful in challenging the NOSB’s authority to decide whether or not to recommend to the Secretary of Agriculture that a material be added to the National List. The most serious challenge came in 1997 when USDA’s first proposed rule rejected many NOSB recommendations, including its initial National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances. USDA’s proposed rule significantly changed many of the NOSB’s recommended practices, directly altered its initial National List, removed its annotations and restrictions on use that accompanied the National List, and attempted to undermine the NOSB’s future governance of the National List process.

The final rule restored the NOSB’s authority, seeming to settle once and for all the NOSB’s authority over allowed and prohibited materials and the main elements of the NOSB’s overall participation in the public-private partnership mandated by Congress. These attempts, unlike what is happening now, did not challenge the provision requiring the NOSB to convene TAP reviews to evaluate petitioned materials

One question raised at the Baltimore meeting is why the NOSB, which has official meetings several times a year that last three or four days, would consider doing TAP reviews or would have time to do them. This heavy work schedule, plus a steady load of committee work between meetings, makes serving on the NOSB a challenging part-time volunteer position.

Another question raised is whether NOSB members, even if they volunteer extra time, have the scientific expertise to do TAP reviews. Four organic farmers, a retailer, two handlers/processors, one scientist, three consumer advocates, three environmentalists, and a certifier representative serve on the current board. But only three would appear to have the scientific expertise needed to qualify as a TAP panel member. One member has worked as an agronomist, one is an ecologist, and one is a veterinarian.

Finally, regarding budget problems cited by the NOP, there have been reports that USDA has diverted $400,000 initially provided for TAP reviews to other program areas. Since this became known, the NOP’s director has announced that $200,000 in funding for the coming year will be used for TAP reviews. This falls short of what is needed.

The new farm bill has authorized large yearly increases in the NOP’s budget and the budget for the coming year is expected to double. In raising the authorization levels, Congress stated it is aware of concerns “raised by numerous organic agriculture interests about the level of resources devoted to the NOP.” USDA, the new farm bill language indicated, should start asking Congress to appropriate enough money to enable the NOP to get the job done.

The NOP and USDA, whether in a Democratic or Republican administration, can’t seem to resist the temptation to try to undermine or eliminate the NOSB’s statutory authority to help define organic and to maintain organic integrity. It is time for USDA to request the money needed to fund TAP reviews and to do whatever else is necessary to come into compliance with all legal provisions relating to the National List process.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · July/Aug 2008

The five-year farm bill that survived a relentless attack on farm subsidy payments and a Presidential veto before becoming law includes important organic farming advances and improvements and higher funding levels for organic programs. Overall, however, the $307 billion initiative does not go nearly far enough toward providing a funding “fair share” for organic agriculture.

The biggest overall gain was making funding for important organic programs mandatory, a change that guarantees five years of full funding and eliminates the need to go through the annual appropriations process to get these programs funded. A total of $22 million in mandatory funding was provided for the main certification cost share program, for example, and $78 million in mandatory funding was provided for the Organic Research and Extension Initiative (OREI). The OREI provision, among other things, provides support for development of new and improved seed varieties particularly suited for organic farming.

Annual mandatory funding of $5 million also was provided for organic data collection by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Economic Research Service, and National Agricultural Statistics Service. It provides funding for collecting and distributing comprehensive organic price reports and for surveys and analysis required for reports on organic production, handling, distribution, and retailing. Authorization also was included for additional money through annual appropriations for organic data collection.

Certification Cost Share Money Restored

Most important to organic farmers is the mandatory funding for certification cost share, a $500,000 per year USDA program established in 2002 that ran out of money four years later. The new $22 million program provides five years of guaranteed funding to cover up to 75 percent of the cost of certification with maximum annual cost-share eligibility of $750 per farm. The previous cost share limit was $500 per farm.

Other gains were made in authorized organic program funding levels that require annual appropriations action. The authorized spending level for the National Organic Program, for example, was increased to $5 million for Fiscal 2008 with annual $1.5 million increases to bring the authorization level to $11 million in Fiscal 2012. The funding increase for the NOP had strong support from organic sector advocates, who urged Congress to provide more funding to the agency to help clear a rulemaking backlog, step up enforcement of the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), fully implement all provisions of the 1990 law, and assure consumer trust in the organic label.

Other important gains included authorization for $5 million annually for ATTRA, the national sustainable agriculture information service that lost much of its federal support two years ago, and a new Organic Conversion Program supported with mandatory funding provided to the Environmental Quality Improvement (EQIP) program.

Organic Provisions Avoided Controversy

The fight over farm subsidies that generated negative editorials and headlines over many months made it easier for the bill’s organic provisions to stay under the political radar, avoid controversy, and move forward in both houses of Congress. Organizations supporting the organic provisions had prepared them well in advance and worked together in presenting consensus proposals, representing the organic sector on Capitol Hill, and using targeted “alerts” to mobilize grassroots help when needed.

These organizations did not agree on everything. But they made a special effort to get along, and to rally, and to the extent possible present lawmakers with both new approaches and a united front. The organizations working together included the National Organic Coalition (NOC), Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (SAC), National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (NCSA), Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), and Organic Trade Association (OTA). NOC’s membership, unlike the others, also includes important national consumer and environmental organizations.

In one change that made a real difference, the House Agriculture Committee for the first time acknowledged organic agriculture’s importance by creating a new subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture. It is chaired by Congressman Dennis Cardoza of California, an organic caucus member with politically active organic farmers in his district. This subcommittee made history by holding the first farm bill hearing on organic issues since the Organic Foods Production Act was passed 18 years ago.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate’s leading organic advocate for nearly 20 years, also provided leadership as chairman of the Senate Agriculture subcommittee responsible for legislation dealing with organic agriculture. Organic provisions in the farm bill also had important support from Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, another organic supporter who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The bill was so massive that it passed both houses, was vetoed, and had the veto overridden before it was discovered that an entire section of the 670-page bill had been inadvertently dropped at the beginning of this process and was neither voted on nor sent to the President. This embarrassing lapse also suggested that neither the President nor anyone at the White House involved in the veto, or any of the lawmakers who voted for or against the bill, had actually read it. Fortunately the dropped 34-page section did not include any organic provisions.

577 Organizations Signed Support Letter

The vote to adopt the conference report in the House with a veto-proof margin, which required support from a large number of Republicans willing to challenge the President’s veto threat, provided the most drama in the long process. A letter signed by 577 organizations, including several organic and sustainable agriculture organizations and sent to all House members before the conference report vote, may well have made the difference.

“This is by no means a perfect piece of legislation and none of our organizations achieved everything we had individually requested,” the joint letter said. “However it is a carefully balanced compromise of policy priorities that has broad support among organizations representing the nation’s agriculture, conservation, and nutrition interests.”

The 2002 farm legislation was extended several times during the long farm bill struggle and, at times when a threatened veto was discussed and a compromise seemed almost out of reach, it appeared Congress might have to settle for a one-year extension. But Harkin and Colin Peterson of Minnesota, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and the ranking Republicans on these committees refused to give up and finally put together a bipartisan bill that passed both houses by veto-proof margins. This was accomplished only because agriculture, nutrition, and conservation provisions were wrapped up together in the bill.

It is important for organic farmers and others to acknowledge the significant progress made in strengthening federal organic programs included in the farm bill and administered by USDA. But it also is important to note that the overall farm bill effort did not put nearly enough emphasis on the long-term goal of a funding fair share for organic agriculture. The need for a fair share is especially important in organic research, extension, education, economics, and development.

‘Fair Share’ Concept Pushed

OFRF has been a prominent leader among organizations pushing the fair share concept. “A coordinated strategy for scaling up organic agricultural research and development should provide a mixture of funding methods and programs to gradually to achieve overall ‘fair share’ spending averaging approximately $120 million a year,” Mark Lipson, OFRF’s policy director stated in House Agriculture subcommittee testimony last year.

He noted that current USDA research, extension, and education resources applied specifically to organic agriculture is about $12 million a year, equivalent to only 0.6% of total USDA spending in these areas. Based on the current 3% organic share of U.S. food retail sales, a fair share of research, education, and education funding would be at least $80 million in Fiscal 2008. And as the organic market share increases to as much as 10% by 2012, the fair share total would be close to $200 million in Fiscal 2012.

Surveys as early as the mid-1970s showed lack of organic research was a barrier to adoption of organic methods. Although funding for organic research and education was recommended in a USDA report published in 1980, the first organic research funding was not authorized until 2001. One factor making this difficult was the fact that a research title proposed initially as part of the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act was dropped in a compromise struck to get it through the Senate.

The gains made for organic agriculture in the farm bill are significant. But the funding for research, extension, and other programs fall far short of the high level of support in European countries that has enabled many to set official organic sector goals as high as 10 to 15 percent. The farm bill funding also falls far short of what is needed to reward U.S. organic farmers for the powerful success stories they provide to agriculture and the many public benefits they provide to the public.

It makes no sense to wait until 2012, when another farm bill is proposed, to press again for an organic fair share and other program improvements. The time to start pushing is now. Organic farmers, and the consumers who benefit from and support their efforts, should start by taking advantage of this election year to press candidates from both parties and for every office to commit to improvements needed over the next five years catch up with the Europeans and reach a realistic and achievable 10% organic sector share in this country as well.

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the July/August 2008 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service

by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · May/June 2008

After doing well in a long campaign to increase support for organic agriculture in the farm bill, organic advocates are looking ahead to USDA implementation of programs with newly mandated funding and the annual push to convince lawmakers who appropriate money annually to do more to provide a “fair share” for organic programs.

Requests have already been submitted by the National Organic Coalition, the Organic Trade Association and others to the Appropriations subcommittees that determine program funding levels for USDA for the year that starts October 1, 2008. Unfortunately the deciders in the appropriations process are unlikely to be too impressed with the requested higher “authorized” spending levels, organic “fair share” promises, or “green” provisions Agriculture Committee members added to the new farm bill.

Farm bill provisions mandating annual funding for programs like certification cost share and some newly authorized initiatives represent real gains over the next five years in support for organic agriculture. But there are no fair share guarantees beyond that. Organic advocates will have to continue to organize, as in the past, to build support for small year-to-year increases in appropriations in categories “authorized” but not “mandated” by the new farm legislation.

Now is a good time to acknowledge that the traditional and reasonably accessible annual appropriations process organic supporters participate in, and the one described in high school civics classes, is not the process that provides all the money appropriated every year. The budget sent to Capitol Hill by the president for funding of USDA and other federal departments and agencies, contrary to what many assume, is not where all the action is.

The rest of the action involves the earmarks process, which is controlled by powerful appropriations committee members in both the House and Senate and shamelessly used for pet projects by nearly all lawmakers. It provides a flow of funding out the back door that bypasses hearings and debate and other requirements of the formal appropriations process. This back door funding, lampooned as a pigs at the trough system, provided $17.2 billion for 11,610 earmarks in 2008. This was down from the high of $30 billion in 2006.

Earmarks Get Bad Press

Earmarks are under constant media attack as wasteful and out of control and some have been linked to Capitol Hill scandals. Appropriations committees are increasingly viewed on Capitol Hill as “favor factories.” Committee members have become increasingly defensive about “oink oink” headlines and late night jokes on television about dubious projects. And Citizens Against Government Waste has just issued its latest “pig book,” an annual report that skewers earmarks and generates critical headlines.

President Bush took after earmarks in his last State of the Union address and, like others before him, called for presidential line item veto authority. However, unless he wants to veto an entire appropriations bill, which is highly unlikely, he has no authority to slow or stop this pork barrel process. It has strong backing from influential lawmakers in both political parties, and the last thing they want is a president with authority to veto earmarks.

The earmarks process that siphons off huge amounts of money every year for everything from studies of cow flatulence to the famous Alaskan bridge to nowhere has received little attention from organic advocates. The chances are slim to none that this back door process will ever be eliminated or cut back, a conclusion supported by the recent 71-29 Senate vote killing a proposed one-year moratorium on earmarks. This suggests the time has come for organic supporters to seriously consider going after an organic fair share of the thousands of pork projects slipped into appropriations bills to help lawmakers bring home the “bacon.”

Earmarks add up to really serious money. A Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report last month stated that earmark spending for 2008 will exceed the appropriated discretionary funding for five entire federal government departments and agencies, including Commerce, Interior, Labor, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency. But these stunning numbers are not a deterrent. It has been reported that so many last-minute earmark requests for 2009 flowed into the House Appropriations Committee to meet a deadline earlier this year that its web site froze up and the deadline had to be extended.

While organic advocates are working hard to convince the appropriations committees that the National Organic Program should have an extra $2 million or so in the coming year for more enforcement and fewer delays in proposing new rules, a single earmark for a visitors center or a new courthouse can siphon off as much money as it costs to operate the entire NOP for a year.

Organic Projects Missing

Although earmarks decisions are made behind closed doors and information is still sketchy and difficult to access, a review of several available lists shows organic projects benefiting from earmarks are few and far between. There is an earmark for an organic farming education initiative at Washington State University, for example, and another for an organic vegetable research initiative at a federal research station in California. The small number of organic project earmarks strongly suggests organic advocates lack a strategy for accessing the earmark process and making the case for a fair share.

A much-criticized sector that would appear to offer organic funding possibilities is colleges and universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a report published last month, said Congress approved 2,306 earmarks totaling $3.2 billion for higher education this year. This respected publication complained that colleges and universities submitting grant proposals that fail federal agency reviews and are turned down for funding simply go to home state lawmakers to get the rejected proposals funded with earmarks.

Minnesota colleges and universities, for example, received $18.1 million in earmarks this year for 19 academic pork projects sponsored by six of the state’s Senate and House members. The only one with organic content was a $219,453 earmark to the University of Minnesota for its Uniform Farm Management Program. A small amount of this earmark funds some organic farmer participation in the program’s data gathering initiative.

The potential for accessing the earmarks system is greatest in states represented by powerful appropriations committee members. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin is chairman of the House appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful positions in Congress, and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Tom Harkin of Iowa are senior Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee members in the Senate. Although both states have done well with earmarks, few have provided support for organic agriculture

An exception is a Kohl earmark that has helped fund a UW Extension Emerging Agriculture Markets Team project that included an initiative implemented by Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services. This joint multi-year MOSES-EAM project has provided funding for a series of “Organic Basics” workshops and publication and distribution to Wisconsin Extension offices of an Organic Production and Certification Manual.

Organic earmarks also can become controversial. Several lawmakers, in a rare earmarks challenge, are sponsoring legislation to rescind more than $2 million in earmarks for Berkeley, California, hidden in the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill. One provides $243,000 to Chez Panisse, ranked recently by Gourmet Magazine as the second best restaurant in America, to create organic school lunches in the Berkeley School District. Although bringing organic foods into schools is certainly a concept worthy of support, the bill’s sponsors have had a field day slamming Chez Panisse menus featuring “Compte Cheese Souffle with mache salad,” “Meyer lemon eclairs with huckleberry coulis,” and “chicory salad with creamy anchovy vinaigrette and olive toast.”

Earmark Process Allows ‘Riders’

In addition to siphoning off billions from the traditional Congressional appropriations process, this back door system has opened the door to riders that have directly threatened organic integrity. The Organic Foods Production Act, for example, has been amended several times in industry-sponsored riders buried in appropriations bills. This was done with no notice to farmers and consumers, no access to amendment language, no public hearings, and no debate.

These additions, known on Capitol Hill as “air drops,” are usually made late at night in conference committee reports. Earmarks provide backers of controversial changes that would not stand a chance under normal appropriations procedures to use the earmarks process to sneak dubious amendments through Congress. Almost every change made in OFPA has come from these back door attacks by special interests and all were aimed at weakening standards.

The first rider, hidden in the FY 2003 War Supplemental Appropriations Conference Report and pushed through for organic wine makers, relaxed sulfite standards. Another, hidden in an appropriations bill by an Alaska senator, ordered USDA to come up with an organic label for wild salmon.

The third, which set off a firestorm when organic advocates were tipped off that it was hidden in the l400-page FY 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Conference Report, would have set aside the 100% organic feed requirement for poultry. This poultry feed rider, proposed by an organic poultry company, embarrassed the House speaker who had intervened on behalf of the Georgia lawmaker who proposed it. Roughed-up House leaders had the controversial rider rescinded several months later in a War Supplemental Appropriations bill.

Some organic advocates prefer a hands-off approach to earmarks, contend earmark money is tainted, and feel organic supporters should push to strengthen the traditional appropriations process and get rid of earmarks altogether. But some ethics changes adopted last year aimed at requiring members to disclose when they steer earmarked funding to pet projects may make the earmarks process somewhat more acceptable. More lawmakers also are accepting earmark applications from both lobbyists and people back home.

There is no good reason why organic research and education proposals should not have the same opportunity as visitor centers and courthouses to compete for earmark funding. Organic agriculture supporters on Capitol Hill should be challenged to do more to solicit organic earmark proposals and to deliver organic specific earmarks. At least $15 billion, and probably more, will be handed out every year in a process that may be opened up more but is not going away. The time has come to start going after a fair share for organic agriculture

by Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the May/Junet 2008 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service