Organic by the Book: List of Inputs or Lifestyle?

The Origin of Organic

The word organic was unnecessary before the advent of chemical inputs at the beginning of the 20^th century. Everything already was. However, as soon as chemical inputs were introduced, people began to question their benefit. Rudolph Steiner wrote on this very subject in 1924, to criticize what he called “industrial farms.”[i] In his book, An Agricultural Testament, Sir Albert Howard coined the term “organic” in 1940 while discussing how such methods could “subordinate the profit motive,” [ii]

However, like so many other seemingly simple words, the meaning of organic varies, depending on who you asked or even your own personal and political affiliations.

Here and there, established farmers who still remembered their early days before chemical inputs, decided to try it the “old way” after finding more and more inputs were required every year to maintain the same yield. Between 1945 and 1965, perhaps only a few score were among the first to join what later became known as the organic movement.

In these early days, organic most often meant tending more to soil structure and health than its individual nutritional components. Organic agriculture, once a throwback to an earlier era, began to grow into a new technology of its own. This agriculture borrowed heavily from the lessons of former colonies in Asia, Africa, and Oceania in those early days, and in fact, still does today.

Second Wave – Counterculture Cares and Cancer Scares

The inevitable crop failures of those early days laid the groundwork for a second phase of expansion during the 60s and 70s. During this time hundreds of young would-be farmers saw organic agriculture as a way of changing their unsatisfactory lives and the increasingly frightening world they perceived around them. Consider, this is the same period of time that saw the publication of such landmark counter-culture works as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalogue. A few thousand young people took a turn at organic farming during this time, often as communal groups. Several mavens of today’s industrial organic farms were among these. While still representing only a fraction of a percent of the food produced in the United States, a quarter century of innovation had established some methods that proved competitive with their now conventional counterparts. More importantly perhaps, organic became synomonous not only with a method of conservational farming, but also with the political and philosophical counterculture of the time.

In Michael Pollan’s influential article from the New York Times Magazine, “Behind the Organic/Industrial Complex,” he defines the perception of organic at the time:

…the word “organic” around 1970 connoted a great deal more than a technique for growing vegetables. The movement’s pioneers set out to create not just an alternative mode of production (in the farms) but of distribution (the co-ops and health-food stores) and even consumption. A “counterculture” based on whole grains and unprocessed ingredients rose up to challenge conventional industrial “white bread” food. “Plastic food” was an epithet you head a lot…More than just lunch, organic food was “an edible dynamic” that promised to raise consciousness about the economic order, draw critical lines of connection between the personal and the political. It was also, not incidentally, precisely what your parents didn’t eat.[iii]

In 1990, 60 Minutes aired a piece on the harmful side effects of a growth hormone used on apples called Alar. Very quickly, a strong consumer demand for organic apples (and other produce) developed. Not only was the still fledgling organic industry unprepared for this demand but, consumers quickly found there was no agreement upon what could and couldn’t be called organic. Without the strength and might of the US government to back them up, organizations such as Oregon Tilth attempted to do so with standards and labelling programmes of their own. There was still no guarantee as to what standard a labelled product from anywhere else was held.

That year Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 -- a bill that mandated the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) begin a process to define just what exactly organic is and means in the marketplace. What neither he nor that congress knew, was that the USDA would take 12 years to accomplish the task. “They gave us 1-1/2 years to come up with the standards, and we took 10 years,” [Barbara] Robinson [deputy administrator for the Agricultural Marketing Service and overseer of NOP] said. “A lot of people had a lot to say about it.”[iv]

As part of NOP, state and local certification agencies, such as Oregon Tilth, would no longer be able to label products organic in their own names. They would now be able to act as certifying agencies, enforcing the federal standard.

Successful Enough to be Interesting

The 1990s became a decade of phenomenal growth for organic producers – registering between 15 and 25% increase in net sales each year during that decade. In a market that had just begun to recover from the “farm crisis” of the mid-1980s, organic products were generally receiving higher prices than their conventional brethren – one Consumer Reports study found the price to consumers was 57% higher on average.[v] While this is tempered by the wildly fluctutating prices of specific produce commodities, the higher prices sometimes given for conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are offset by the irrationally high prices sometimes paid for items based upon value judgements.[vi]

Even starting as such a tiny share of the nation’s “food basket,” organics soon began to interest major players such as General Mills, ConAgra, ADM, and Kraft, each of whom now markets at least one organic product. By 2000, organics occupied nearly 3% of the overall food market in the United States and nearly 7% in parts of the European Union (EU). What was once a very niche of little interest to large firms has become the fastest expanding food market in the United States, projected by the Organic Trade Association to be worth nearly $20 billion dollars in 2005.

During the early and mid-90s agribusiness, input producers and suppliers, commodity farmers, and ranchers began to weigh-in with their opinions on the matter. Previously opposed and outspokenly cynical of anything deemed organic, they now proposed very loose standards that would allow practices such as irradiation of plant and animal products, application of municipal sludge and the planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In particular it was in the best interest of agribusiness firms (and especially processors) that the standards being drawn-up would allow as many of their “partner” growers as possible to become certified, even if on just a few acres. With minimal changes in operating practices, new equipment need not be purchased, and the industrial techniques that have become so prevalent in last 20 years could be maintained. This is of concern to processors because in an effort to provide organic ketchup, Heinz would rather deal with large producers they already know and have established relationships with than many small farmers scattered around the nation. Reducing the total number of producers increases each producer’s reliance upon the parent corporation, and thus their influence upon the supply chain. While not necessarily vertical integration, the effect is largely the same.

Increasingly, large agribusiness and processing corporations have begun to acquire the labels that have already been successful in the organic marketplace. Companies like General Mills are attempting to reach a larger market by promoting organics to a sector of the market they call “health seekers” while being careful to keep the parent company’s name as inconspicuous as possible in an effort to not offend the core consumer GM calls “the true natural.”[vii]

As was their custom, USDA included such interests on the National Organic Standards Board along with producers, packagers, processors, retailers, shippers and others “from the organic and scientific communities.”[viii] It seems they enjoyed the sort of influence on USDA policy makers enjoyed by commodities groups in the past, when in 1997 standards were approved by this board that included the afore-mentioned stipulations.

Implementing a National Organic Programme

The resultant 275,000 angry letters brought an altered board together for another 5 years of deliberation.[ix] When final standards were introduced in March 2000, proposals including irradiation, municipal sludge, and GMOs were removed. Those allowing toxic natural compounds and processing additives remained. There was also no mention of soil building, fair labour practices, integrated pest management, or the dozens of other practices that have come to be associated with organic farmers in the minds of most consumers.[x]

The National Organic Programme (NOP) was adopted by congress in October of 2002. For the very first time, there would be a label on all products that met the newly adopted standard affecting processors, producers and growers of organic products. Organic in New York would be guaranteed the same organic found in California.

The Root of a Problem

What USDA has failed to answer with NOP is whether organic can or even should be defined as a list of accepted inputs or instead, a broader set of ethics and practices designed to reduce off-farm inputs of all kinds. Herein lies what many small producers consider to be the loopholes that allow large-scale and otherwise unsustainable operations to be certified organic under the current standards. Those same producers consider it an opportunity to bring organic food to a much wider audience of consumers with lower prices and greater availability.

In the balance are thousands of small farms that have come to rely upon the premium price of organics, to survive in the marketplace – a premium price already disappearing from some markets where supply now outpaces demand. These are farms that have sales greater than the $5,000 cut-off for exemption from certification, but likely much smaller than the average family that derives all its income from farming, with sales in excess of $250,000. Many of these small, organic producers feel the larger operations will flood the market with cheap goods and drive them out of business.

Also of concern to the small, organic farmer is the cost of certification. The price has been set high enough to compensate for the true cost of doing paperwork, but this figure is still quite high for farms with sales of $10,000 annually. As part of NOP, state and local certification agencies, such as Oregon Tilth, would no longer be able to label products organic under their own names. They would now act as certifying agencies, enforcing the federal standard.

In an effort to make the NOP as uniform as possible, provisions were made in the adopted legislation that ban the use of any additional criteria to provide an “organic plus” label associated with the USDA. The accredited certifying agencies are themselves authorized to provide a completely separate label to promote other production practices, such as the Salmon Safe label found on products in the Pacific Northwest that promote healthy habitats for salmon.[xi] Other areas of concern are social or ecological. This stipulation is unique among existing nationalized organic standard programmes, such as those found in the EU.[xii]

Environmental groups remain largely out of this debate. This perhaps comes from the ambiguity created by rhetoric of more conservative farm organizations. They argue that more land will be put into production with adoption of organics because of lower yields. This might be a valid argument if it were not that over-production continues to characterize agriculture in the United States.

Possible Solutions

To keep these standards from being rendered meaningless by congress, USDA is charged with the responsibility of monitoring the progress of implementation for NOP. Undoubtedly, data gathered during the next few years will shape the nature of this debate for several years to come.

For many conservative think tanks, such as the Cato Institute, the USDA is sending a message to consumers based upon what they see as “fear-mongering” on the part of organic producers and liberal advocacy groups. While former Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman announced the NOP “…is not a statement about food safety…nutrition or quality,” he did admit it functions as a marketing tool. To support their argument that the public is being duped, these groups cite public opinion surveys that suggest half of consumers polled thought products labelled USDA organic would be “healthier, safer, and better for the environment.”[xiii] They do not believe the federal government has any right to skew markets with what they believe is false advertising.

Furthermore, they believe claims that conventionally produced foods (and specifically GMOs) pose a human health risk are created (or even just plain made up!) by the organic industry to create markets for their products and foster distrust among consumers for conventionally produced products. Unfortunately, little conclusive research has been published to support or refute these claims.

Their easiest course of action for the USDA is to do nothing but make periodic reports to congress should they be asked. This would likely result in a dramatic increase in the number of small farmers who already ignore the organic label and market directly to consumers or adopt additional 3^rd party (or eco-) labels. Should this catch on to any large extent, the organic label as it exists may loose public credibility – indeed, it already has to some extent among the early adopters of organics production and consumption.

One solution is to make arrangements with these so-called eco-labels to follow a similar set of regulations, to be used in conjunction with the existing USDA Organic label. This includes all the beauraucratic steps that provide for inspections, enforcement and transparency – steps that organizations like The Organic Farming Research Foundation feel are absolutely necessary to ensure their success.[xiv] Such labels would allow for at least one other grade of organic that recognizes the holistic approaches used by the many small producers who received local certifications prior to 2002.

Of course, the definition of these other eco-labels is likely to be just as contentious should the notion catch on among consumers. I think it’s fair to say that controversy has a tendency to follow money around. That said, if such labels become of concern to no one but the “die-hard” consumers, there may be very little argument over what such standards should be. On the other hand, there is so much controversy surrounding just what organic is, to define what is a higher grade of organic could take another 12 years!

One problem with the adoption of additional labelling is that consumers may become confused or even put-off by the proliferation of labels in the marketplace. Clearly, the average consumer has his or her own definition of what organic is. Educating people on the complexities of soil health, labour and ecology issues would take a lot of time and effort. This educational campaign could be taken up at the national level and then farmed out to local agencies, such as is currently the case with nutritional educaion programmes.

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