2005-2010 MOSES Broadcaster Columns
Inside Organics Column
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…
Read More...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…
Read More...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…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics ·March/April 2008 The organic community’s market expansion vs. organic values debate has heated up worldwide over a determined effort by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) to ditch the basic standards developed over 30 years as the gold standard for organic. The proposal to replace the IFOAM basic standards with a Benchmark for Standards was hit hard by IFOAM members and organic stakeholder critics from 32 countries in comments filed early last summer. Alarmed reviewers contended the proposed benchmark blurs the difference between organic and conventional, fails to meet consumer expectations, and threatens to turn global standard setting into a race to the bottom. The response is reminiscent of the flood of comments in 1998 that forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withdraw its proposed organic rule and rewrite it. First round comments submitted to IFOAM by 72 organizations and individuals cover more than 170 pages and, with few exceptions, strongly oppose the benchmark proposal. The opponents include respected U.S. institutions, organizations, and organic community leaders. The push by trade expansion proponents inside IFOAM to ditch the basic standards went largely unnoticed here at first. Lack of attention was due to…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Jan/Feb 2008 When a Wisconsin dairy farmer slammed organic farming recently after accepting a local service club award for his 750-cow conventional milking operation, it brought back bad memories of similar attacks over the last 30 years that have never been backed up by scientific or economic data. “If the entire economy went to organic farming, I want to know who’s going to decide who starves, because I can guarantee we would not be able to produce enough food in this country to feed our people,” the farmer was quoted as saying after receiving the club’s Distinguished Agriculturist Award. His critical remarks about organic farming were reported in a story spread over half a page in a recent issue of a Wisconsin farm weekly. These comments echo the attack launched in the early 1970s by Earl Butz, the controversial Nixon-appointed secretary of agriculture who demanded to know how we would decide which 50 million people would starve if organic farming methods were adopted. Another USDA official claimed manure piles as high as the Empire State Building would be needed to make organic farming work. Unfortunately no research comparing organic and conventional yields was…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Nov/Dec 2007 The National Organic Standards Board, the one-of-a-kind official body that recently completed 15 sometimes bumpy years advising and assisting the U.S. Department of Agriculture in implementing the Organic Foods Production Act, (OFPA) deserves the kind of report card most students dream about. The organic community, like a good teacher rewarding exemplary performance, should give the NOSB all “A’s” for its commitment to organic integrity and overall record of performance since its first 14 members were appointed in January of 1992. NOSB members volunteer for 5-year terms and have formal meetings that last three or four days several times a year. This heavy work schedule, plus a steady load of committee work between meetings, makes serving on the NOSB a part-time, unpaid job. USDA, on the other hand, deserves a “C+” at best, partly for the disrespect and overall bad attitude it has shown at times toward the NOSB. This mediocre grade would also be partly for sporadic official moves, mostly unsuccessful, to engage in end runs and other attempts to undermine the NOSB’s advisory role and authority mandated by Congress. This includes USDA’s unsuccessful attempts to take away the authority Congress…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · Sept 2007 Widely publicized reports of Chinese lapses in guaranteeing the safety of its food exports, including press reports raising questions about the integrity of its organic food exports, suggest an urgent need to increase government and industry oversight that will guarantee organic integrity and reassure consumers. The National Organic Program, which has never sent an auditor to China to make even one site visit, recently disclosed in an interview with the Des Moines Register that it will make surprise visits to organic farming and processing operations in China and check the records of several of the USDA-accredited certifiers operating there. It has been little short of irresponsible to allow nearly five years to go by without having some kind of official on-site surveillance of the activities of USDA- accredited certifiers working in China. Barbara Robinson, the Agricultural Marketing Service official who supervises the NOP, has consistently resisted suggestions that there was any need to send auditors to China. Her response has been that the NOP has not received any complaints that would require an on-site visit. The NOP did not disclose what kind of information had surfaced that was important enough to…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · July 2007 Almost everyone seems to have heard about the growing threat of global warming, but almost no one seems to have heard about the important contribution organic farmers are making to help mitigate the damage. Organic farming’s mitigation contribution and future potential, although well documented here and elsewhere, is receiving little notice from either policymakers or those putting together carbon credit mechanisms that could provide a new source of organic farming income. Attempts to have organic farmers included in these new carbon credit mechanisms have failed to make any headway so far. A much more public, focused, and convincing effort is needed so organic producers will be rewarded in some way for all the credits they are piling up. Global warming mitigation approaches have gained significant attention in many countries, especially in Europe where governments acknowledge and reward organic farmers for the many other public benefits they provide. But even there, for now at least, organic farmers are still on the outside looking in as carbon credit mechanisms are demonstrated. Potential carbon trade developers getting organized in developing countries may be more inclusive. It is reported, for example, that one potential carbon…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · May 2007 A series of recent developments strongly suggest that organic farmers and others in the rapidly growing organic sector have gained new political access and support that will enhance their ability to influence both annual organic program funding and the 2007 farm bill process unfolding on Capitol Hill. An unusual amount of work on organic initiatives, more than can be described here, has been underway in the organic community over the past year. There may well be lingering differences of opinion about organic sector priorities and support level requests as the farm bill process moves forward. But overall, organic organizations are expected to make a special effort to get along and to rally and, to the extent possible, present lawmakers with both new approaches and a united front. Probably the most important new political development is a result of the November elections, which changed the control of both houses of Congress and their agriculture-related committees. The four most important committees handling organic legislation and appropriations in both the House and the Senate, as a result, are now headed by members of the House and Senate from states with large numbers of organic…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · March, 2007 A strong push is underway to line up new funding to enable the National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS), the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), and other government agencies to collect and report much more organic price, acreage, sales, and other current data. The main effort will press Congress to renew authorization of the 2002 Organic Production and Marketing Data Initiative this year when it puts a new farm bill together. Specific farm bill data proposals being pushed would provide AMS with funding for regular nationwide reporting of organic prices, enable the Economic Research Service (ERS) to continue and accelerate collection of market trends and other organic sector data, and support NASS organic sector surveys. Along with this farm bill initiative is a new push for more organic data money in the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget for the fiscal year that starts October 1. The National Organic Coalition, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and other organizations pressed appropriators last year to provide $1 million for AMS national price collection, another $1 million for NASS Census followup surveys, and an increase to $750,000 for ERS collection and analysis of organic economic data. The Administration…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum · Inside Organics · January, 2007 The program that has provided certification cost-share funding for Midwest organic farmers since 2002 appeared to be on life support when Congress adjourned in early December without taking final action on a long list of unfinished appropriations bills. A continuing resolution to keep the bills alive until Feb. 15 offered some hope the funding could be salvaged when a new Congress returned in January. But the chances dropped from slim to none on Dec. 11 when the incoming Democratic chairs of the House and Senate appropriations committees announced nothing further would be done on appropriations bills left unfinished when the Republican-controlled Congress left town for good. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies involved, they announced, would have to scrape by on funding levels that were in effect for 2006. This wiped out any possibility that the $500,000 proposed for cost-share funding in the coming year would be made available in the 35 states covered by a $5 million fund provided in the 2002 farm bill. The fund has been exhausted and the $500,000 being sought through the appropriations process would have covered cost-share payments until new money could be…
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