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As the USDA organic seal becomes ever murkier in its meaning, what choices are left to us?
We want real organic food. We want vegetables and berries grown in the soil. We want cows and chickens raised on pasture. It sounds so simple And it is what the law guarantees us. And it is what most organic farmers in the U.S. provide.
And yet . . . if we look closer, that’s often not what we’re being offered as organic in the grocery stores. If we pull on the thread, the cloth starts to unravel. We see soil farmers and pasture farmers going out of business for lack of demand, even while we’re desperate to buy the food they grow.
In the last 7 years there has been a quiet redefinition taking place in the USDA National Organic Program that oversees organic standards. Large scale industrial producers have insinuated themselves into organic certification to transform what the green and white label stands for.
It’s easy to forget that before there was a National Organic Program, before there was organic certification, before there were genetically engineered crops and industrial factory farms, there were farmers—farmers who grew nutritious food and raised healthy meat, using farming and ranching practices that worked with, and enhanced, the Earth’s natural ecosystems.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program evolved out of the need to define “organic” in order to protect these good farmers in a marketplace increasingly being taken over by industrial food producers. Unfortunately, over the years, industrial food lobbyists have used their financial and political clout to try their best to weaken organic standards.
In the produce section of my local food co-op sit Driscoll’s berries in their neat little rows: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, each in plastic clamshells. No other berry options are present on the shelf. Paging the receivers, I ask, “Do we have any non-hydroponically grown berries?”
Organic farming isn’t new. For as long as people have been growing food, natural and organic methods were the norm. What’s new is organic’s substantial value in the modern marketplace. And that radical change has occurred in just the last 30 years.
A few weeks ago I got to ask an important question of Jennifer Tucker, the head of the National Organic Program (NOP).
"I have received reports from both Florida and California of hydroponic berry operations that are spraying herbicide, immediately covering the ground with plastic, putting pots down and then getting certified the next week."
“And my question is, if that were true, is that permitted by the National Organic Program?"
We were at the end of a turbulent meeting with Jenny and about twenty farmers from the Organic Farmers Association. Some of the farmers had spoken passionately about the need for the NOP to end the lack of enforcement of the Pasture Rule and to finalize the Origin of Livestock Rule for dairy animals.
The certified organic label has helped save many generational farms and enabled people like me, who do not come from agricultural backgrounds, to become successful farmers. Organic farming has brought environmental benefits — healthier soils, freedom from toxic pesticides and herbicides — to 6.5 million acres in the U.S.
Grass-fed beef sounds like a lovely idea. Customers envision happy cattle grazing on green pastures, producing meat that is better for our health and the environment. It turns out that none of this is a given. The jury is still out on whether grass fed beef is better for the environment (it’s only slightly better nutritionally), and, “grass-fed” doesn’t mean a cow was never served grain.
Sewage sludge: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) euphemistically calls it “biosolids.” But what is it really? And why should you care?
As an article from In These Times explains, sewage sludge is:
. . . whatever goes into the sewer system and emerges as solids from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sludge can be (its exact composition varies and is not knowable) any of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals used by industry; new chemicals created from combining two or more of those 80,000; bacteria and viruses; hospital waste; runoff from roads; pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs; detergents and chemicals that are put down drains in residences; and, of course, urine and feces flushed down toilets.
This toxic stew is sold to farmers who use it to fertilize food crops—a fact most consumers don’t know, because food producers and retailers aren’t required to tell you.
On Tuesday, December 10, the Senate advanced a version of the Farm Bill, in hopes of passing a bill before the end of the year. While the latest version contains some good news for small independent farmers, it also includes a plan that would weaken organic standards.
Tucked into the final version of the 2018 Farm Bill is a seemingly innocuous provision that would undermine organic standards by severely limiting our ability to get synthetic and non-organic substances off of the “National List” of what’s allowed in organic food and farming.
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