OCA Says Subsidize Organic,
Not Corporate Farms

Food Politics: OCA Says Subsidize Organic, Not Corporate Farms
by Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association
9/10/01
<www.organicconsumers.org>

The US Department of Agriculture's new federal regulations on organic food,
finally released late last year (12/20/00), are basically a set of rules for
what organic producers and sellers can and can't do. These heavily amended
final rules, rewritten extensively after heavy pressure and lobbying by the
organic community, are certainly a vast improvement over the outrageous
proposals that USDA bureaucrats put forth at the end of 1997. The USDA's
infamous (12/15/97) proposed rules, which actually gave birth to the
Organic Consumers Association, suggested it was OK to use genetic
engineering, irradiation, toxic sludge, intensive animal confinement, animal
cannibalism, and pesticides, and still label such products as "USDA
Organic." The final rules outlaw all of these practices. But of course there
are still major problems with the Bush administration and Washington's
pro-industrial farming policies and their vision, or rather their lack of
vision, regarding the future of organic agriculture.

While the USDA's new organic regulations may appear on the surface to be
generally acceptable in reality they are not much more than a recipe for
keeping organic foods and crops restricted to a small niche market.
Currently organic food and crops represent 3% of US agriculture. Genetically
engineered crops, in comparison, are now being grown on approximately 20%
of all US farmland. At current rates of growth (20-25% per year) organic food
will expand to 10% of the total market by 2010. Unfortunately, if current
trends persist, the other 90% of US farms at the end of this decade will be
giant, chemical-intensive factory farms, using genetic engineering,
increased chemical and animal drug inputs, and other dubious technologies to
enhance their bottom line.

This year the federal government will funnel less than $5 million dollars
into organic agriculture. At the same time the USDA will give $30 billion
dollars of US taxpayer money to conventional agriculture $18 billion of which
will go to the largest and richest 10% of the nation's farms and ranches. By
throwing nothing more than crumbs to organic farmers, while continuing
to massively subsidize chemical-intensive farms and genetic engineering,
the Bush administration maintains a facade of consumer choice,
while meanwhile propping up what is arguably the unhealthiest, most
inequitable, and destructive system of food and fiber production and
consumption in the world.

One of the primary goals of the Organic Consumers Association is to build a
national consumers network powerful enough to reverse USDA and government
food priorities. Instead of organics remaining nothing more than a niche
market, the OCA, as well as the majority of consumers (according to a 1997
national poll) want organic food to become, as soon as possible, the
dominant mass market, with chemical-intensive farming and genetic
engineering pushed to the margins, or, better yet, removed from
commercialization altogether. Instead of, for example, giving $18 billion
dollars this year of taxpayer money in the form of corporate welfare to the
nation's largest and most unsustainable farms and ranches, the OCA has a
better idea. Let¹s put this $18 billion of our tax money to work building an
organic and sustainable future.

With $18 billion in corporate welfare transferred to the organic sector, we
could help hundreds of thousands of family farmers and ranchers start to
make the somewhat difficult transition to organic farming. We could start
paying these farmers, for example, a premium price for their "transition to
organic" products so that they could afford to decontaminate and rebuild
their farmland, institute biological pest and weed controls, change their
animal husbandry practices, and pay for the increased labor costs of organic
farming. Society as a whole would immediately start to reap the benefits of
this organic revolution: safer food, cleaner water, reduced pesticide
pollution, more humane treatment of animals, greater plant and animal
biodiversity, and economically revitalized rural communities.

With $18 billion we could easily afford to stop serving junk food to
students and help the nation's 14,800 school districts start to make the
transition to organic school lunches. At the same time we can start teaching
young people about sustainable agriculture, humane treatment of animals, and
healthy living. Instead of Channel One broadcasting mandatory junk food ads
to students, and Coca Cola and McDonald's supplying vending machines and
literal junk food to the nation¹s increasingly overweight and unhealthy
kids, let¹s have student-organized organic school gardens and tasty and
nutritious organic school lunches, with food provided as much as possible by
the students themselves as well as local and regional family farms. Instead
of curriculum packets supplied by Monsanto and Kraft/Phillip Morris, let¹s
have students learn about healthy food choices and a sustainable
environment.

While we use the power of our federal tax dollars to put a stop to poisoning
and brainwashing our kids at school, we can, at the same time, stop feeding
cheap and unhealthy food to patients in hospitals and to our elders in
nursing homes. We can also buy organic food from local and regional
producers and make this food available for the economically disadvantaged,
at food shelves and through church and community institutions. Every poor
person, every pregnant mother, and every schoolchild in America deserves the
healthiest and most nutritious food that money can buy Everyone knows that
school lunches and hospital and nursing home food are a national disgrace.
Everyone knows that it is unjust that only the middle class currently can afford
to buy organic food. Now is the time to join with the OCA and do something
about this national disgrace. Now is the time to move beyond the niche
market of "USDA Organic."

After three years of hard work, the OCA now has 150,000 members,
subscribers, and volunteers in our national OCA network. We call this
growing national network Food Agenda 2000-2010. Our goal is to have a
veritable army of one million organic consumers enrolled in the OCA network
by the end of next year, and two million by the end of 2003.

The only way we're going to keep changing America¹s food marketplace is by
continuing to vote with our consumer dollars for organic food, giving
preference to food produced by farmers in our local areas and regions,
whenever possible. However the only way we're going to change public food
and agricultural policy is to vote with our political power as
well--exercising grassroots pressure by calls and letters, votes, and other
actions. In other words we have to move beyond our individual actions and,
with others in our areas who feel the same way, put on the pressure to make
sure that our (so-called) elected representatives do the "right thing." That
is, we must build up powerful grassroots networks all over the United
States. We must have networks so powerful that public officials start to
guarantee us (under the penalty of not getting reelected) that our tax money
will start going toward sustainable and healthy food and agricultural
practices, rather than into the already bulging pockets of the corporate
agribusiness, junk food, and biotech special interests.

We can start this Food Revolution by, among other things, paying special
attention to building up powerful OCA networks in a number of the nation¹s
strategic Congressional Districts and states, where Representatives and
Senators sit on the powerful agriculture committees. We can likely get
thousands of environmentalists and forest activists to help us out with
network-building in these Districts and states as well, since these same
Federal agriculture committees have primary jurisdiction over our forests
and public lands, as well as our farm and food policies.

Our political goal is ambitious but practical. First and foremost we must
identify and contact 5,000 organic consumers in each of the nation's 435
Congressional Districts. Then we must build a two-way communications and
mobilization network with these like-minded consumers, using email, the
telephone, and regular mail as our means. Finally we must mobilize this
entire network, both locally and nationally, so as to transform the
consciousness of the public at large, change the dynamics of the
marketplace, and reform government policies and laws.

The OCA has already come a long way--with your support and
participation--since 1998. We now have 150,000 people in our national
network, with several thousand people in a number of Congressional
Districts. But we've still got a long way to go. Obviously we need your
help. If you can afford to send us money for this national identification,
network-building, and mobilization project, please do so. If you can
circulate petitions or otherwise help us identify others in your area that
support our efforts, let us know. And if you are willing to involve yourself
directly in OCA grassroots campaigns, such as the Starbucks Campaign
or our school lunch SOS "Safeguard Our Students" Campaign in your
local area, please write to our office, send us an email, or go to the
"Participate Locally"section of our web site.