WASHINGTON, DC: After an extensive audit and investigation of alleged improprieties at the USDA’s National Organic Program, the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) made public their formal report, dated March 9, substantiating the allegations of prominent organic industry watchdog groups — that under the Bush administration, the USDA did an inadequate job of enforcing federal organic law.

Since 2002, when the USDA adopted the federal organic regulations, the agency has been plagued by underfunding and a number of scandals and complaints about its cozy relationship with agribusiness interests and lobbyists.

“We are satisfied with the thoroughness of the investigation conducted by the USDA’s Inspector General,” said Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute. “And, we are pleased and impressed by the earnest response of the current management at the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), and its National Organic Program, in responding to the report’s critical findings.”

The audit of the National Organic Program found that improvements in the program had been made, but also identified 14 major concerns requiring better management controls and the need to strengthen enforcement as well as oversight of organic certification agents.

In a letter dated May 10, 2008, The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group, had formally requested the USDA’s Inspector General investigate questionable enforcement practices, and deficiencies, in the NOP’s oversight of the organic industry. An investigative report last year by the Washington Post concerning mismanagement at the NOP, and public concerns expressed by Congress, made the release of the OIG audit highly anticipated.

Some of the most troubling findings of the new audit include not following through on enforcement after violations were confirmed by federal law enforcement investigators. When enforcement was pursued, the USDA sometimes delayed action for as long as 32 months. And the NOP could not document for OIG investigators the status of 19 complaints it had received, since 2004, that alleged illegal activity.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Will Fantle, The Cornucopia Institute’s Research Director. “Spotty enforcement of organic rules, since 2002, has enabled a number of giant factory farms, engaged in suspect practices, to place ethical family farmers at a competitive disadvantage, particularly in organic dairy, beef and egg production.”

The report pointed out that the State of California, which was given authority to oversee the USDA’s organic standards in that state, was woefully inadequate in its oversight and enforcement capabilities. With growing organic imports, from countries like China, the audit also found that foreign certifiers were not properly supervised.

“Obviously, these are troubling findings. But we are satisfied that, finally, these deficiencies are being taken seriously by the political appointees at the USDA,” added Fantle.

In a formal response to the OIG report, AMS administrator Rayne Pegg at the USDA stated that she “reviewed the report and agree[d] in principle with its findings and recommendations.”

Although a long-time critic of the management at the USDA’s National Organic Program, Cornucopia, an aggressive industry watchdog, affirmed its belief in the credibility of the current organic program and said it would continue to fight for “excellence” in public service at the federal agency.

“With mandatory annual inspections of farms and processors, and audits of transactional documents, consumers should feel comfortable with the credibility of the organic food they are purchasing,” Kastel added. “The organic label is still the gold standard for families seeking the safest and most nutritious food. We need to work earnestly to make sure that it continues to deserve the trust of consumers.”

Although not mentioned by name, the OIG audit identifies numerous actions and decisions by the former organic program manager (Dr. Barbara Robinson) for some of the most serious enforcement deficiencies in the agency.

After the Obama administration and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack took the reins at the USDA, one of their first actions was to appoint Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, a former Tufts University professor who is widely respected in the organic community and is an expert in farming and food regulations, as the Deputy Secretary at the agency.

Last fall, Dr. Merrigan appointed Miles McEvoy to replace Robinson as the head of the organic program. McEvoy, with a distinguished 20-year career overseeing one of the largest state organic programs in the nation at the Washington Department of Agriculture, quickly announced “the age of enforcement” was at hand for the organic program.

“I think the Obama/Vilsack administration is serious about cracking down on abuses by corporate agribusiness, and others attempting to exploit the organic label,” noted Kastel. “We are organic watchdogs, not lapdogs, so we will continue to judiciously monitor progress at the USDA. But so far, the actions and words by the new managers at the organic program lead me to believe they are sincere in the statements they are making.”

MORE:

Quotations attributable to Mark A. Kastel, Codirector and Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute:

Although Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act as part of the 1990 farm bill, charging the USDA with oversight of the burgeoning organic industry, it was not until 2002 that an acceptable set of regulations was presented to the industry to enable OFPA to be enacted.

“The culture at the USDA, under the Clinton and Bush administrations, was outright adversarial.”

“The Bush administration allowed factory farm production to proliferate, gaining as much as 30-40% of the organic dairy market, in addition to industrial-scale production of eggs and beef. Add to that exponential increases in Chinese imports, and imports from other countries that were not receiving adequate oversight, and you have a “perfect storm” for depriving American family-scale farmers of a fair living through participating in the organic marketplace.”

“In every market in the United States organic consumers can find ethically produced organic food.”

In a years-long research project, The Cornucopia Institute has rated the 115 organic dairy brands and found that 90% are produced with high integrity. They have conducted a similar research and rating project for the nation’s organic soy foods: www.cornucopia.org

The Cornucopia Institute is a nonprofit public interest group with a staunchly nonpartisan perspective in their oversight of the organic industry.

USDA Office of Inspector General NOP Investigation/Audit Highlights:

EMMAUS, Pa.– Rodale has announced the release of Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe by Rodale Chairman & CEO Maria Rodale. Organic Manifesto cuts through the confusion and misinformation to provide an indispensable and highly readable look at why chemical-free farming unquestionably holds the key to better health for people and for the planet.

Through interviews with government officials, doctors, scientists, business leaders, and farmers coast-to-coast, Rodale sheds new light on the state of 21st-century farming and connects the dots to get to the heart of an issue that is much bigger than most of us even realize. She examines the alliances that have formed between chemical companies that produce fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and genetically altered seeds, the agricultural educational system that is virtually subsidized by those same companies, and the government agencies in thrall to powerful lobbyists, all of which perpetuate dangerous farming practices and deliberate misconceptions about organic farming and foods.

Over the last 100 years, chemical companies have misled consumers into thinking that we cannot survive without GMOs or chemicals. The truth, Rodale uncovers, is that chemicals in our food are poisoning our families and are linked with cases of asthma, allergies, autism, ADHD, cancer, diabetes, infertility, obesity, genital malformations, accelerated aging, organ failure, and several other serious conditions.

“All of us, especially our children, are guinea pigs in a giant chemical experiment that has failed,” said Rodale. “There are over 80,000 chemicals used in our environment, and especially in agriculture, and most have never been tested on human health. The majority of Americans can’t tell you the difference between organic and natural, and the reality is that many researchers are finding that there is no such thing as a ’safe’ dose of chemicals. This concerns me, and I wanted to make the issues easy to understand so that we can all stand together and fight for what’s right. Rodale Inc. was founded on the belief that organic farming is the key to better health both for us and for the planet, and never has this message been more urgent.”

Said Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal in his foreword to the book: “This book conveys the importance of the organic movement, at a time when a handful of corporations are trying to control our food supply, when climate change and future petroleum shortages threaten the entire basis of today’s industrial agriculture. This book is full of Maria’s wisdom, optimism, and common sense. In a remarkably brief period of time, we have done tremendous damage to the environment and to ourselves. Here you will find how we can start to undo it.”

As Chairman & CEO of Rodale Inc., the world’s leading multimedia company with a focus on health, wellness, and the environment, Rodale is also the Editor-in-Chief of the company’s newest online venture, Rodale.com, which features the latest news and information about healthy living on a healthy planet, as well as her blog, Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen.

She joined Rodale in 1987, first working in circulation and direct marketing and eventually leading Rodale’s in-house direct-marketing agency. In 1998, she served as director of strategy, where she led the strategic review, planning processes, and management changes that refocused the company on publishing information on healthy, active lifestyles. Rodale also led the company’s Organic Living division, Rodale’s first integrated-brand division, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Organic Gardening and oversaw all of Rodale’s gardening books. She joined the Rodale board in 1991 and was elected chairman in 2007. She lives in an ecologically friendly house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three children.

Continued Rodale, “Consumers have the power to change things. Every purchase we make rewards either the good or the bad. If you demand organic — at our supermarkets, restaurants, and from the government — we can protect ourselves and our planet.”

About Rodale Inc.
Rodale is a global media company with a heritage, mission, and authority dedicated to the health and wellness of the individual, community, and planet. Through a broad portfolio of leading media properties, Rodale reaches more than 70 million people around the world through multiple distribution channels, including magazines, books, online, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, and video. The company publishes some of the best-known health and wellness lifestyle magazines, including Men’s Health, Prevention, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Bicycling, Running Times, and Organic Gardening, and is the largest independent book publisher in the United States, with a collection of bestselling titles, including Vice President Al Gore’s Our Choice, Flat Belly Diet!, and Eat This, Not That! Rodale is also a leader in direct-response marketing and has more than 25 million active customers in its database. www.rodaleinc.com

Once again rural America stands on the Edge of Hope

Ankeny, IA – There are moments in a nation’s history that define it. For America’s remaining 2 million farmers (less than 1% of the population) and the more than 300 million eaters, the recent joint Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture workshop on lack of competition in the food and agricultural sectors held in Ankeny, Iowa is potentially one of those moments.

With concentration at record levels in agriculture today, well past levels that encourage or even allow fair prices or competition, the Obama administration’s call for public workshops is an historic event. While agribusiness continues to deny any problem, a simple look at the facts shows that the playing field for family farmers and American consumers is distorted beyond anything resembling a free or competitive market.

Even though these statistics have been widely published lately, I will include them here again just to illustrate the point: 1 company (Monsanto) controls the genetics of 93% of soybeans and 80% of the corn grown in the U.S; 4 companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift & National Beef Packing Co.) control 85% of the beef packing industry; 4 companies (Smithfield, Tyson, Swift & Cargill) control 66% of the pork packing industry.
For farmers trying to get a fair price for seeds or livestock, such concentration places a crushing burden on their bottom line.

This past Friday nearly 800 individuals from across the country gathered in a small community college auditorium to hear top officials in the Obama administration, including cabinet members Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa) and Attorney General Eric Holder, address the issue of how such excessive market concentration and food monopolies have negatively impacted the lives and livelihoods of family farmers, consumers and rural America. Over the course of eight hours, the audience, made up mostly of farmers, labor workers and farm advocates, some of whom traveled from as far as Montana, Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina, listened as academics, economists, agribusiness giants, commodity groups and a few farmers detailed specific areas of concern regarding the lack of competition in agricultural markets or, in the case of a several industry representatives, denied outright the existence of any problem.

The gravity of this meeting and its outcome could be felt by all attendees as Vilsack, Holder, DOJ antitrust chief Christine Varney, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and others took the stage for the first panel. A sense of anticipation and restlessness filled the crowd as the panel was announced, which included Iowa’s attorney general, Tom Miller, Congressman Leonard Boswell, Lt. Governor Patty Judge and Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. The inclusion of the last three panelists, while expected, caused some dismay by longtime Iowa farm activists. Having two Democrats (Boswell and Judge) and a Republican (Northey) at the podium with a long history of supporting industrial agriculture was not what many had hoped for when the workshops were first announced.

Workshop #1 Begins: Vilsack, Holder and Varney

After a round of pleasantries, saying he was glad to be back in Iowa, Secretary Vilsack opened the hearing sharing his concern about the loss of family farmers over his lifetime and the shrinking of rural communities, which he has seen as a small town lawyer, mayor, state senator, governor in Iowa and now as Secretary of Agriculture.

“Looking at the statistics regarding rural America and farms, I have a lot of concern,” said Secretary Vilsack.
He then went on to detail how the rising age of the average farmer, now 57 as reported in the 2007 Ag census, the higher and more prolonged rates of unemployment in rural America and the loss of economic opportunity in rural areas across the country were all issues that he planned to address by improving programs at the USDA.

No matter what one believes about Vilsack’s agricultural biases, favoring biotech, ethanol and exports while still increasing opportunities for beginning farmers, organics and nutrition programs like farm to school, it was evident that he realizes that agriculture and rural America are at a serious crossroads under his watch.
“This is not just about farmers and ranchers,” Vilsack said. “It’s really about the survival of rural America.”
In a USDA press release issued later that day, Vilsack drove that point home even further.

“In my travels across the country, I hear a consistent theme: producers are worried whether there is a future for them or their children in agriculture, and a viable market is an important factor in what that future looks like,” said Vilsack. “These issues are difficult and complex, which is why this workshop today is so important and long overdue.”

Attorney General Holder called the public workshop “a milestone” event.

Many in the audience, especially family farmers concerned that the workshop would be another dog and pony show that promises change, but only returns agribusiness as usual, were encouraged by Holder’s attendance, which was only announced late last week.

For leading industrial ag companies, Holder’s appearance in Ankeny, was a sign of how serious the Obama administration is intent on taking the issue.

During his opening statement, Holder said that the DOJ was committed to vigorous protection of competition, noting how “reckless deregulation has restricted competition in agriculture.”

Holder went on to say, “We all know that one of the greatest threats to our economy is the erosion of free competition in our markets. And we’ve learned the hard way that recessions and long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal.”

These were stern warnings for agribusiness’s minions in the audience.

Closing out the first panel was DOJ antitrust chief, Christine Varney, who was widely recognized as the driving force behind the antitrust hearings. Speaking about the realities of U.S. antitrust law and realalistic enforcement expectations, Varney promised a tough stance from her office and a clear signal that a new sheriff is in town.

“Big companies aren’t necessarily bad,” Varney said. “But they have a responsibility to act responsibly. Patents have in the past been used to maintain or extend monopolies — and that’s illegal.”

For those family farmers and proponents of sustainable agriculture who have long seen Monsanto as the 800-pound agribusiness bully in the room, Varney’s comments were applauded.

Farmers Unite: Call on Obama to “Bust up Big Ag”

Even so, while issues of lack of competition and enforcement of antitrust laws have been on the agenda for family farmers and rural advocates for decades, the rest of the day’s lineup did not live up to what many had hoped for. When originally announced, the first workshop had been proposed to focus on seed concentration, only to get watered down to include hogs, livestock, transparency and buyer power.

For weeks leading up to the workshop, farm groups and rural advocates had been quietly pushing the USDA to find more inclusive voices and more progressive farmers, those who had been most negatively impacted by excessive ag concentration, to be included on the panels.

The resistance that DOJ and USDA officials met from family farm groups led to a delay by several days of the official farmer panel lineup being released publicly and led Sectary Vilsack to allow more farmer comment during the lunch break.

As a result of the delay, leading farm, labor and consumer groups held a townhall meeting the evening before to make sure that real farmer voices were heard on these important issues.

On the eve of what may have been the most historic day in agriculture in the 21st century, more than 250 farmers, their friends and families, union workers and farm advocates gathered in a hotel in Ankeny, just down the road from the official DOJ/USDA event to bring attention to their plight and call for the administration to “Bust up Big Ag”.

During the open forum period, when more than 40 individuals from the audience had one minute to address the crowd, the sense of urgency for farmers and rural Americans was palpable.

Jerry Harvey, a 4th generation southern Iowa dairy farmer described the recent plight of America’s dairy farmers, who have experienced a record crisis this past year as prices have dropped more than 50% at times from 2008 levels, stranding farmers with thousands of dollars of debt to carry each month for more than a year.

“What turned out to be the American dream, turned out to be the American nightmare for the past 15 months,” Harvey said, detailing his interactions with Iowa’s political leaders, including Senator Harkin and Grassley and Congressman Boswell’s offices to find some solution to the current dairy crisis.

After Harvey, fellow Iowa dairyman, Scott Cruise addressed the crowd, telling them that he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to pass on his farm to his 15 year old son, who desperately wanted to become the 5th generation to farm and milk cows in Iowa.

Unfortunately for the audience, the story was all too familiar.

For many dairy farmers, like the chicken farmers and hog farmers before them, who have all been forced out of production because of the false efficiencies of excessive concentration, the Obama administration’s announcement of an antitrust lawsuit against Dean Foods, which controls more than 40% of the fluid milk market in the U.S., it may be too late.

Even as farmers in the audience the next day clapped when Varney mentioned the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Dean Foods, many realized the debt levels these family dairy farmers have been forced to endure the past year has reached a crisis point.

While many have waited a lifetime to hear government officials address lack of competition in agriculture and enforce antitrust laws, the only question that remains is: How fast will the wheels of justice turn?

The Nutrition Journal recently published a review done by The College of Agriculture, California State University, and University of California Cooperative Extension Service. This review uses three decades worth of research to compare fatty acid profiles and antioxidant content in grass-fed and grain-fed beef.

This review found that several studies suggest grass-based diets are high in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) and elevate precursors for Vitamin A and E, as well as cancer fighting antioxidants such as glutathione (GT), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity as compared to grain-fed live stock. Along with that, they also found that grass-fed beef is lower in overall fat content, so it should be something considered for anyone watching their weight.

Not only are there high levels of CLA found in grass-fed beef, but it also is transferred through the milk of grass-fed cows. On the other hand, this review states that grain-fed beef consistently produces higher concentrations of MUFAs, which a study has linked to a higher mortality rate for women.

The only significant downside to grass-fed beef, which was noted, was the taste is not preferred because of palatability. Because grain-fed has been the norm for the past 60 years, most American’s may have to make an adjustment to the taste; the taste difference can be helped by making sure that the beef is 100% grass-fed with fresh folage or grass.

The full review and source of this article can be read here: Nutritional Journal 9:10

The Food and Drug Administration is reexamining the safety of a culinary staple found in every restaurant, food manufacturing plant and home kitchen pantry: spices.

In the middle of a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness linked to black and red pepper — and after 16 U.S. recalls since 2001 of tainted spices — federal regulators met last week with the spice industry to figure out ways to make the supply safer.

Jeff Farrar, the FDA’s associate commissioner for food safety, said the government wants the spice industry to do more to prevent contamination. That would include using one of three methods to rid spices of bacteria: irradiation, steam heating or fumigation with ethylene oxide, a pesticide.

“The bottom line is, if there are readily available validated processes out there to reduce the risk of contamination, our expectation is that they will use them,” Farrar said. But the FDA cannot currently require it.

Legislation pending in Congress would require food companies to take steps, such as treating raw spices, to avoid contamination. The measure would also mandate that importers verify the safety of foreign suppliers and imported foods. The House overwhelmingly approved the bill last year, but it has stalled in the Senate.

Recent spice recalls have involved contamination with salmonella, a group of bacteria that live in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals, including birds. Most healthy people infected with salmonella recover within days, but the illness can be serious and even fatal for small children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

The ongoing outbreak of salmonella illness connected to black and crushed red pepper, which sparked a recall of those spices as well as salami products made with them, has been linked to 249 illnesses in 44 states and the District of Columbia. No deaths have been reported.

The long shelf life of spices and their widespread use make it difficult for health officials to detect an outbreak of illness and connect it to a particular spice.

Consumers often associate salmonella with poultry, meat and other moist foods. But microbiologists say that the bacterium can survive in dried spices for years and that it is tougher to kill in a dry environment.

Also, it takes only a small amount of salmonella in a dry environment to cause human illness, said Linda Harris, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis.

Americans are eating more spices, consuming on average about 3.5 pounds in 2008, compared with 1.2 pounds in 1966, Agriculture Department records show.

Contamination of raw ingredients has long been a problem in the spice industry, according to Cheryl Deem, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association. “The vast majority of spices are cultivated outside of the U.S., where processing methods often result in contamination,” she said.

Except for red chili peppers, garlic and onions, most spices sold in the United States are grown overseas, including in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, Grenada, Sri Lanka, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Brazil and China.

In developing countries, many spices are harvested by farmers from small plots of land or grown wild and gathered from different areas, where pollution and water problems can create contamination hazards.

“You can import shoes, tables, lamps and chairs from anywhere in the world and you kind of know what you’re going to get,” said Paul Kurpe of Elite Spice Inc. in Jessup, Md. “But when you import food, you’re importing their habits, traditions and their standards of food safety.”

Some say the spate of recalls over the past decade does not necessarily mean the contamination problem is growing.

“In the last 15 years, food safety is just at an increasingly higher level of awareness,” Harris said. “We’ve got increased testing, increased detection methods. I don’t think what we’re seeing is necessarily a true increase in prevalence. I think it’s an increase in our ability to detect.”

Steve Markus, director of food safety and commercial products at Sterigenics Inc., the biggest food irradiation company in the country, said about half of the nation’s spices are irradiated.

But he said nearly all companies using irradiation sell to industrial customers. No retail spice company uses irradiation because federal law requires disclosure of irradiation on the label, and the industry thinks consumers will not buy those products.

“If the labeling issue would go away, I think there would be a high interest to go to irradiation,” Markus said, adding that irradiation is the cheapest and most effective method to decontaminate spices.

Roger Lawrence is vice president for quality control at Maryland-based McCormick’s, the world’s largest spice company. In its 121 years in business, it has never pulled a spice product from the market because of bacterial contamination, he said.

McCormick’s has built a comprehensive system that begins with educating its overseas growers about safe agricultural practices and ends with treatment of its finished product, he said. The company uses a mixture of steam treatment and ethylene oxide fumigation for the spices sold to retailers and irradiates only a small portion of spices for industrial customers at their request, he said.

Harris, who is scheduled to address the spice industry at its annual meeting next month, said her message is simple.

“With every outbreak, with every recall, you need to sit back, pull your food safety team together and look at what you’re doing, even if it’s to reassure yourself that you’ve got adequate controls in place,” she said. “The spice industry in its entirety should be reevaluating food safety.”

What is the latest taxpayer-subsidized economic stimulus scheme?

Why, manure digesters on factory farms, of course!

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled plans to promote manure digesters as a way to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. The trick is that you have to be a factory farm to qualify.

In his State of the State address in January, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced his latest round of tax credits for factory farm expansion, including a whopping $6.6 million for two manure digesters in Dane County catering to just a handful of mega-dairies. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk has also been pushing for $1 million in her budget for these digesters.

The real tragedy is that manure digesters actually make global warming worse while “solving” a manure problem that would not even exist if cows were allowed to graze on pasture rather than being confined indoors. As Paris Reidhead documents in the January 2010 issue of the Milkweed, methane is 21 times as bad as carbon dioxide when it comes to causing global warming, and this methane threat largely stems from factory farms that store liquid manure in lagoons under anaerobic conditions. In contrast, utilizing manure as compost under aerobic conditions reduces the “carbon footprint” of dairy cows by over 90 percent.

From Jan. 11 to 24 I was in Germany to speak on the dairy crisis in the U.S. as part of the International Dairy and Eco Fair Trade Conference in Berlin. Representatives from around the world spoke on the problems facing dairy farmers in their regions. We agreed on global strategies to raise farmgate prices and bring dignity to family dairy farmers.

The European Milk Board hosted the second half of my trip, including tours of dairy farms and milk plants. Our first stop was a 950-cow dairy on a former East German collective farm. The farm buildings and connected methane digester were several years old and received huge government subsidies to keep them operating. There were chronic problems with the digester and at the time the mixer in the tank was broken, requiring special scuba divers to repair it. Similar problems plague manure digesters in Wisconsin, which seem to be on perpetual high-tech life support.

While in Germany we also toured newer 600-800 cow dairies with digesters. The owners explained that these digesters were simply not profitable without huge government subsidies. As problems developed they were forced to install a newer more expensive system, and with that “fix” came newer problems. It seemed this treadmill was mostly designed to benefit sales people, technicians and manufacturers of manure digesters, not family farmers or the environment.

Without a fair milk price that actually covers their cost of production, many of the German farmers said they would not survive through 2010. The same crisis is facing dairy farmers in the U.S. who have endured a 50 percent decline in farmgate prices due to corporate control, even as consumer prices for milk have not budged and the dairy giants report record profits. In contrast, sustainable organic grass-based dairy farmers were a bit better off in Germany, as they are in the U.S., though their future is not secure either.

Numerous studies by Tom Kriegl of the UW Center for Dairy Profitability have shown that the most efficient dairy operations have less than 100 cows, mostly outside and eating grass — yet, such a family farm is not large enough to qualify for taxpayer support and does not create enough manure to require a methane digester.

As long as my tax dollars and those of other organic sustainable farmers are being used to bankroll schemes that just increase pollution for more corporate profit, there will be no economic recovery. Indigenous communities developed “earth-friendly” farming methods that kept our planet healthy for thousands of years. Many of these practices are being incorporated into family farming today. In fact, a recent 2008 study by 400 scientists for the United Nations International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development concluded that small-scale organic agriculture is not only the best means to feed the world, but also the best response to climate change.

Let’s stop wasting money on expensive digesters for a manure problem that does not need to exist, and put cows back outside on pasture where they belong. When manure is treated as a valuable resource, as it is on small farms, then we can eliminate or drastically reduce the need for petroleum-based chemical fertilizers. Ending factory farm subsidies and promoting sustainable agriculture instead will not only lead to fairer milk prices for family farmers and healthier food choices for consumers, but it will actually help spare the planet from climate change, too.

John Kinsman, an organic dairy farmer from La Valle, is president of Family Farm Defenders. The organization is located in Madison.

The Iowa Independent
By Lynda Waddington

ANKENY, Iowa — Whether they realized it or not, the roughly 250 family farmers, workers and consumers gathered Thursday night fired off their own point-by-point response to a letter from two Republican Senators that urged the U.S. departments of agriculture and justice to maintain the existing status quo in the agriculture industry.

The often rambunctious townhall event was organized by a coalition of groups concerned that everyday people do not have adequate opportunity to express their opinions on the agricultural industry at a joint U.S. Department of Justice and USDA antitrust workshop on Friday. And it had one overarching message: “Bust up big ag.”

“We are here today to make sure that the voices of everyday people are heard loud and clear and send a simple but powerful message to our government regulators and elected officials,” said Barb Kalbach, a fourth generation family farmer from Dexter and board member for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “Bust up big ag, pass policies that promote sustainable agriculture and local markets, and put people first during the workshop series by prioritizing public comments and input and adding more family farmers and consumers to panels.”

On Wednesday, however, two Republicans in leadership positions on the Senate Agriculture Committee urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to do just the opposite.

“We urge you to ensure that these sessions are balanced and reflect the wide array of producers and business operations in modern-day agriculture,” wrote Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Pat Roberts of Kansas.

After noting that “American agriculture is responsible for feeding the world,” that many industry “segments have become more vertically-integrated” and “other small and successful agriculture businesses have merged” to meet demands, the senators note that change is often met with frustration.

“Such change has led to better income margins for producers and processors as well as lower prices for consumers,” they wrote, adding that competition issues have been “studied extensively by several entities including the United State Congress and, specifically, the Senate Agricultural Committee.”

Although Chambliss and Roberts appear to call for a wide swath of American agriculture to have representation at the meeting, it is difficult to overlook the key point of their correspondence:

“Beyond our interest in a balanced review, we would hope that no correlation is planned between the upcoming workshops and current enforcement activity in your respective Departments. From recent news of lawsuits to undo mergers to heightened scrutiny of pre-merger activity and other investigative activities with agribusiness companies from a variety of sectors, it is readily apparent that both the Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice are already quite engaged in this area. We are concerned there is potential for your workshops to become venues for further fact-finding or public scrutiny of agricultural businesses that are already subject to existing antitrust laws and in some cases are under investigation or prosecution by the federal government.”

As of 2007, more than 45 percent of U.S. beef cattle are slaughtered by four companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National.) Most U.S. Pork is also processed by just four companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift and Smithfield). Seed corn is controlled predominately by two companies (Pioneer Dupont and Monsanto), and roughly 40 percent of the U.S. fluid milk supply is controlled by one company (Dean’s Foods).

Rhonda Perry, a Missouri livestock and grain farmer, said 30,000 cattle feed lots went out of business in the last 13 years. During the past 20 years, the nation lost 70 percent of its independent family hog farmers — but managed to keep production levels the same.

“We’ve been told that we have to have consolidation, concentration and vertical-integration in order to give consumers the cheap food they desire,” she said. “The reality is, if you look at the pork industry — a prime example because it has become really vertically-integrated in the last 25 years — that between 1985 and 2008 pork prices to consumers went up by 72 percent. At the same time the hog farmers’ share of that consumer dollar went down by 43 percent. So, somebody in this industry, in this consolidation process, is definitely getting rich. It’s working for somebody, but it is not working for producers and consumers.”

Fred Dowered, a Minnesota farmer, told the audience that when he began farming 34 years ago his state had 50 seed companies. Now, however, there are only four.

“When there were 50 seed companies, the price of seed corn was held to its own. Now they just let it go rampant,” he said.

That’s a situation that Jim Kalbach, an Adair Couty grain farmer, knows all too well.

“Monsanto soybean seed was $31 a bag last year. Now they jumped it up one third to $41 a bag — in one year,” he said. “That’s highway robbery.”

Many of the men and women in the audience also took exception to the belief that the U.S. food supply boasts the most healthy and inexpensive food in the world.

“The two things we are going to hear over and over on Friday is that we’ve got the cheapest and safest food supply in the world. Both of these statements are damn lies,” said Gary Klicker, a southern Iowa producer that can trace his family’s agricultural roots to 1666.

Klicker believes that taxpayers will be out “billions if not trillions” of dollars cleaning up rivers, nourishing soil and dealing with abandoned animal confinement facilities.

“Have you ever heard of 19 million pound beef recall in Sweden or Germany or Russia or Cuba or anywhere else? The food isn’t safe. We are eating garbage off the floors of our packing houses. It’s being fed to our kids in schools, and it goes into our grocery stores. Most of the people have no idea what they are getting, and wouldn’t know what real food tastes like if they had it. This is a serious, serious situation — one that we will be paying for 100 years from now. It isn’t safe. It isn’t even cheap.”

Although U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley are on the schedule for Friday, along with U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, no federal elected officials attended the townhall meeting in person. A handful of audience members used their very limited comment period to note their disappointment that the officials themselves did not attend, and at least two were openly hostile toward lawmakers who had long-served without providing notable solutions to the competition issues in their industry.

“This was a huge crowd,” Dave Campbell, district representative for Boswell, said following the meeting. “What I’m going to pass on to the Congressman is the fact that were a whole lot of people here who are hurting. He will have an opportunity to hear from both sides, and will hopefully make the best decisions possible.”

John Moreland, staff assistant for Harkin, also said that he would be taking his reflections on the “passion” expressed at the meeting back to his boss. Although The Iowa Independent attempted to speak with Bret Schuster, a member of Grassley’s campaign, he quickly exited the meeting.

A notable appearance at the townhall was made by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. After the meeting Mark Lauritsen, vice president and director of the UFCW Meatpacking Division, explained that his members understand how closely their livelihood is tied to that of the farmer.

“We should have been getting together back in the 1980s and having these discussions. … Our lives are connected with farmers. Our members’ lives are connected to farmers. Our success rises and falls with the American farmer,” he said.

Producers from at least 10 states traveled to Ankeny for the townhall. Many also plan to attend the workshop, and would like opportunity to speak. Since only one hour at the end of the day has been allotted for public comment, however, it isn’t likely that there will be time for them all. That being said, it also isn’t likely that these motivated individuals are going to go away. Wisconsin Dairy producer Joel Greeno said several groups are already gearing up for the June meeting planned in their state, and that other producers are organizing in relation to the workshops planned for Colorado and Alabama later this year.

“The situation in agriculture these days, even though it has been coming on for a long time, is reaching critical mass,” said Frank Jones, a Missouri owner and producer. “I’m afraid that if we don’t have some type of meaningful change in the way business is done that agriculture will be lost forever.”

Our food safety system is broken. Toxic food-borne pathogens like E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella are no longer just contaminating meat and eggs, but have caused outbreaks in traditionally safe foods like spinach, peppers, tomatoes, and nuts.

Yet instead of addressing the root of the problem, lawmakers and regulators in Washington, D.C. have rushed to action, proposing to fix our food safety system with band-aid solutions that may actually threaten the small-scale, organic and local farms that are part of the food safety solution. We cannot let this happen!

A highly centralized, chemical-intensive, corporate-driven agricultural system, deeply out of balance with nature, lies at the root of our nation’s food safety woes. Any proposed bills and rule changes must recognize and address the root causes of food-borne illness outbreaks, as well as acknowledge and protect the unique benefits of organic farming and local food systems.

For example, while manure infected with dangerous bacteria from grain-fed cattle in crowded feedlots has been linked to contaminating our food supply, not a single bill in Congress or regulatory proposal at the USDA or FDA acknowledges this problem—much less tries to solve it. In fact, the food safety bills in Congress entirely exempt animal agriculture from stronger regulation, placing added regulatory burdens solely on the shoulders of the fruit and vegetable growers and processors whose products may have been contaminated by feed-lot manure pathogens.

And in the rush to find a solution to our food safety problems, numerous lawmakers and government officials have put forward their own proposed solutions—creating a confusing array of food safety bills, proposed rule changes, revised guidance documents and even court cases.

To help people cut through the confusion, The Cornucopia Institute developed an organized chart of current legislative and regulatory proposals. For each proposal, we outline different avenues for taking action, sample talking points, due dates and addresses for sending in comments, and websites for additional information. The document will be periodically updated as new developments occur.

We hope this information will help farmers and consumers of organic and locally-grown foods send the message to Washington D.C. that food safety reform should recognize the unique value of organic and local food systems to food safety, and should contain protections for these farms and not needlessly place them at a competitive disadvantage due to their style of operation.

We encourage people to take action by contacting the lawmakers and agencies. Information on how to take action, deadlines and addresses for sending comments, and sample talking points are offered here.

Wall Street Journal
By Scott Kilman

Crop biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. has the most at stake in the first of an unprecedented series of public meetings that the antitrust wing of the Justice Department is holding across the Farm Belt.

In January, the Justice Department launched a formal antitrust investigation of the St. Louis company’s handling of the most widely planted genetically modified crop in the U.S., a herbicide-immune soybean.

Now, Justice’s tight-lipped antitrust division is taking the unusual step of inviting competitors, farmers, politicians and activists to air any gripes about Monsanto — and to suggest ways to limit the company’s reach before a high-profile audience.

The Obama administration disclosed Wednesday that Attorney General Eric Holder will speak Friday at the first of five such meetings, billed as joint “workshops” with the Department of Agriculture on competition issues.

Friday’s meeting in Iowa will focus on genetically-modified seeds, the 14-year-old market largely created and led by Monsanto, which has at least one of its patented genes in about 90% of soybeans grown in the U.S. and in about 80% of U.S. corn.

Monsanto declined to make Hugh Grant, its chairman and chief executive, available for comment, but issued a statement that “an objective review of the agricultural sector will reveal that competition is alive and flourishing.” A Monsanto vice president is scheduled to speak Friday.

Farmers and the seed companies that license genes from Monsanto have long complained about the prices it has been able to command. The price of a bag of soybean seed, for example, has roughly quadrupled since Monsanto began licensing genes.

Pioneer Hi-Bred, the seed unit of Wilmington, Del., chemicals concern DuPont Co., has alleged that Monsanto is trying to use gene licenses to limit competition. Monsanto has also tried in recent months to dispel fears among some farmers and seed breeders that Monsanto will make it hard for them to use generic versions of genetically modified crops after the company’s patents expire.

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean is genetically modified to survive dousing by a weedkiller made by Monsanto called Roundup. Introduced in 1996, the seed made it so easy for farmers to chemically weed their fields that many stopped using other herbicides or mechanically tilling their fields. With that seed losing its ability to draw royalties after 2014, Monsanto is trying to get farmers to switch to a second generation of Roundup Ready seed that it has patented.

Mr. Holder will be joined Friday by Christine Varney, his antitrust chief, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and several states’ attorneys general, some of whom have been investigating Monsanto’s business practices for years.

“Seed technology is pretty heavily consolidated,” said Mr. Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, a state where Monsanto and Des Moines-based seed giant Pioneer Hi-Bred are locked in a bitter fight for farmer loyalty that includes dueling lawsuits in a federal courthouse. “I’m not taking sides,” Mr. Vilsack said Wednesday. “What I’m really concerned about is farmers getting a fair shake.”

The USDA estimates that U.S. farmers spent $17.2 billion on seed in 2009, up 56% from $11 billion in 2006.

President Obama promised early in his administration to “reinvigorate” antitrust enforcement, which involved the Justice Department disavowing Bush era guidelines. His antitrust chief has largely pushed on her own for a closer look at agriculture, where everything from hogs and cattle to corn, soybeans, milk and seeds are processed by a handful of big concerns.

Ms. Varney said she came up with the idea for the workshops a year ago during her nomination hearings, when Sen. Russ Feingold (D. Wis.) and other farm-state legislators complained the Bush administration permitted a merger wave among agricultural processors that undermined farmers. More than 15,000 people have submitted comments to the Justice Department on the workshops.

Ms. Varney, who said she worked for a time during her youth organizing farm workers, said she feels a personal connection to farmers, who by nature of their business are usually dwarfed by the companies they buy from and supply. “I don’t have any preconceived notions,” she said, adding that the Friday workshop is arranged in a way that will allow her “to get a variety of views” on Monsanto, among other things.

Still, several of Friday’s slated speakers have been critical of Monsanto, and the meeting is an opportunity for them to present to senior government officials what they see as remedies for curtailing its influence. While it is far from clear that the Obama administration will adopt any of these ideas, which mostly touch on how Monsanto licenses its genes, it’s probably the best chance that many speakers will ever get to present their arguments. “This is a rare opportunity,” said Diana Moss, vice president of the American Antitrust Institute, a Washington think tank.

Neil E. Harl, a retired Iowa State University economics professor, says the meetings are “a very different tactic for the (antitrust division) to go public like this,” he said. “Maybe they think just talking about these things might have an impact on the boardroom.”

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, for example, filed a comment for the workshop that calls on the federal government to stop biotechnology companies from using gene licenses to block independent seed companies from stacking genes from various companies in a plant.