I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday and that your 2020 is already off to a great start.

For our annual look-ahead piece, I asked several leaders of organic-related non-profit organizations to discuss this upcoming year. More specifically, what needs to get accomplished and what they would like Organic Insider readers to know about.

Below are edited versions of their answers.

Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety

As it has been for 22 years, the Center for Food Safety’s (CFS) goal for the next year is to continue to 1) protect the integrity of the organic standards and 2) work to evolve the organic ethic.

The first goal is critical, as the National Organic Program/USDA continues to act illegally and unilaterally to undermine the standards and cater to industrial forces within organic. This includes allowing contaminated compost in organic (which CFS defeated in court), altering the “sunset” regulations (which CFS challenged in court but then were allowed under the most recent Farm Bill), and allowing the organic certification of non-soil based hydroponics (a CFS court challenge to this will be filed this month).