Op-ed in todays NY Times on new national organic regulations

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Small Organic Farmers Pull Up Stakes

 

October 14, 2002

By SAMUEL FROMARTZ

 

WASHINGTON

A curious thing happened on the way to a national organic

standard: the small farmer, once at the heart of the

organic movement, got left behind.

 

Talk to those who have farmed organically for years and you

will find a surprising number who have decided not to call

their produce organic any longer. The costs -

administrative, monetary and philosophical - of using the

government-defined label are too great. Only farms

certified under the United States Department of

Agriculture's regime can legally call their produce organic

after Oct. 21. (Farms with annual revenues under $5,000 can

forgo formal certification, though they are expected to

follow the rules.)

 

At local farmers' markets around the country, you'll find

many farmers who say their vegetables are " grown without

chemicals " or that their meat is " free of antibiotics, " but

many won't use the " O " word. Others are wondering if they

will continue to.

 

Why are these organic farmers opting out?

 

The decision

stems from the reasons they went into organic farming in

the first place. Rather than relying on chemicals, these

farmers worked in concert with nature and the environment.

Rather than sell at depressed prices to giant

agribusinesses, they sold locally. Instead of relying on

crop hybrids capable of being shipped thousands of miles,

they picked ripe produce and sold it the next day.

 

Organic farmers certainly didn't win consumers over with

price. Their product was attractive because its quality was

high and it was grown without synthetic pesticides in an

environmentally sustainable manner. It was better for the

planet and, by implication, for you. The organic ideal was

rooted in a Jeffersonian vision of the family farmer eking

out a modest, independent living from honest toil. The

organic marketplace made that ideal viable because there

were consumers willing to pay a premium for the products

these small farms grew.

 

The success of this organic ideal over the past two

decades, however, was also its undoing. As consumers

snapped up organic products, less idealistic farmers got

into the act. In a few well-publicized cases, conventional

produce (that is, grown with chemical pesticides and

herbicides) was sold under organic labels, causing a furor

among producers and consumers and prompting states like

California to define organic practices.

 

By 1990, this regulatory approach was codified in the

Organic Foods Production Act. Now, the U.S.D.A. makes

clear, organic is a method of production, nothing more.

 

Once a label becomes firmly defined, it also becomes a

barrier to entry and thus politically charged. The initial

list of organic practices, for example, included the use of

sewage sludge as fertilizer and allowed genetically

modified crops. Conventional farm interests wanted to be

able to continue these practices. Faced with public

protests, regulators scratched those items.

 

But even as the rules were refined, small organic farmers

had trouble with the fine print. One farmer told me that an

organic certifying agent inspecting his farm wanted to know

the dates on which he had moved his crates of zucchini into

the cooler the previous year and when he had sold them.

" After farming for 12 hours a day, I am not going to spend

two hours doing paperwork, " he said.

 

Considering that small farmers typically grow dozens of

crops on small plots, the paperwork burden could

potentially exceed that of a large organic farm growing one

crop on hundreds of acres.

 

Farmers also chafed at rules that sought to standardize

practices that vary by farm or region. Composting

guidelines, for example, proved unworkable for some

farmers; they required such frequent turnings of piles (to

kill potential pathogens) that some actually caught fire.

These rules are expected to be rewritten. But some farmers

who had been organic for years, composting safely without

this specific regime, were offended at being told to alter

their methods, especially when they saw only higher costs

as a result.

 

If larger farmers, however, could work out the business

model and the actual practices, they could grow organic

produce on a huge scale and ship it to the distributors

that feed supermarket chains. In an industry where

low-single-digit growth was the norm, the organic segment's

growth rate of 20 percent over a decade was unheard of.

Organic agriculture might have been prompted by an agrarian

vision, but along the way it also became a growth business,

because that was the most realistic way to sate burgeoning

consumer demand. Now farmers are talking about organic

grains and produce coming out of China, where farms have

sought certification to sell in the American market.

 

Inevitably, as more land goes into production, prices will

come down, and organic foods will become more widespread.

The environmental effect will be salutary - more acres will

be farmed without chemicals - but don't be surprised if

your local farmer has moved on, unable or unwilling to use

a term that once defined his world. Small farmers will

still sell bountiful produce at farmer's markets, but as

always, they will be an alternative to the dominant

agricultural motif.

 

 

Samuel Fromartz is writing a book about the organic food

industry.