Cornucopia, WI — The nation’s leading organic farming watchdog, The Cornucopia Institute, is challenging what it calls a “conspiracy” between corporate agribusiness interests and the USDA that has increasingly facilitated the use of questionable synthetic additives and even dangerous chemicals in organic foods. In its new white paper, The Organic Watergate, Cornucopia details violations of federal law, ignoring congressional intent, that has created a climate of regulatory abuse and corporate exploitation.

When Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 it set up an independent advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) that, uniquely, has statutory power. Any synthetic input or ingredient used in organic farming or food production must be reviewed by the NOSB to assure that it is not a threat to human health or the environment.

The Cornucopia report charges the USDA with “stacking” the NOSB with agribusiness executives that all too often have “sold out” the interests of organic farmers and consumers.

“The organic community came together and actually asked the government, in order to maintain a level playing field and organic integrity, to regulate our industry,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute. “How many other industries have ever asked the federal government for tough regulations and enforcement?” Read Full Article »

National Resources Defense Council
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Jackie Wei

Awards celebrates leaders and innovators in the field of sustainable food and agriculture

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (May 16, 2012) – The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) today honors four remarkable food visionaries for their trailblazing work to make our food systems healthier and more sustainable at the fourth annual “Growing Green Awards”. The winners, who are leaders in regenerative ranch management, farmworker justice, farm-to-school food, and making organic food mainstream, will be celebrated this evening at the Palace of Fine Arts Rotunda in San Francisco.

“These vanguards are serving up a food system with generous portions of workplace justice, economic viability and ecological integrity,” said Jonathan Kaplan, Director of Food and Agriculture at NRDC. “They are living proof that we can grow and eat food that is good for us, our communities and the planet.”

An independent panel of prestigious sustainable food thought-leaders selected the four winners from a pool of 250 impressive candidates that included diverse growers, business leaders and food change agents across the country. The 2012 winners are: Read Full Article »

The Atlantic
By Ari LeVaux

The real dispute is over valid but competing priorities.

On April 23, the science journal Nature published a paper titled “Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture,” by Verena Seufert et al. The mainstream press waded into the paper’s implications but had a hard time packaging them in a headline. CNN announced “Organic yields 25% lower than conventional farming,” while the Los Angeles Times proclaimed “Organic Farming, carefully done, can be efficient.”

Pundits have used the paper to support contrary arguments in the ongoing debates about organic agriculture. Such cherry-picking isn’t a huge surprise, given the issue’s divisiveness, said co-author Dr. Navin Ramankutty of McGill University.

“We made everyone equally unhappy,” he told me by phone.

The paper is a meta-analysis of previous studies comparing organic and conventional agriculture, and purports to be the second of its kind. The first, by another team in 2007, concluded that organic agriculture could outperform conventional agriculture, but parts of that study’s methodology were criticized. Seufert et al. took those criticisms into account, hoping to avoid similar challenges, and considered 66 studies that compared the yields of 344 different crops. In this sample, conventional techniques outperformed organic methods in terms of overall yield. In some circumstances, and with some crops, the difference is statistically insignificant. There are counterexamples as well. Read Full Article »

All Africa – Times of Zambia
By Gethsemani Mwizabi and Annie Sampa

EXPANDING Africa’s shift towards organic farming will be good for the continent’s nutritional needs, the environment, farmers’ incomes, African markets and employment.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Deputy Secretary-General Petko Draganov said this recently at the 2nd African Organic Conference in Lusaka Zambia.

The conference, attended by more than 300 participants from 40 countries, had the theme “Main-streaming organic agriculture into the African development agenda.”

No doubt, organic agriculture can offer an impressive array of food security, economic, environmental, and health benefits for developing countries, especially in Africa.

It has been clear for some years that organic farming “fits” Africa. Organic agriculture does not use artificial fertiliser and other chemicals, which are expensive for the continent’s farmers, as 90 per cent of these inputs are imported.

It preserves and enhances the soil in a region where land degradation and expanding deserts are a serious concern. Read Full Article »

The Dickinson Press (North Dakota)
By: Betsy Simon

Minus the lack of chemicals on his crops, life at Patrick Frank’s 1,200-acres of organic farmland north of South Heart mirrors that of any other farmer.

“There’s not really a difference in what I do, except that when spring comes instead of just jumping in a sprayer to spray weeds, I work with the equipment to get rid of weeds,” he said. “I also try to do more crop rotation to handle the pest problems. I guess maybe it’s more labor intensive because I’ve got to get out there and work the fields more often, whereas someone who’s not an organic farmer can just go out and put crop in the ground and spray, and they’re done ’til harvest.”

Organic farming is the fastest growing farming segment in a decade.

California leads the nation in organic cropland, followed by North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA also reported in 2008 that 45 states had certified organic farmland, but organic farming still accounted for less than 1 percent of the nation’s cropland. Read Full Article »