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?”

In order to placate concerns of federal involvement in the nascent organic industry, Congress specifically earmarked the majority of the 15 seats on the NOSB for farmers, consumers, scientists and environmentalists as a way to balance the power of commercial interests involved in organic food manufacturing, marketing and retail sales.

“Many in the industry generally thought this system of shared power, with regard to synthetics in organics, was working until we received a wake-up call at the NOSB’s meeting late last year in Savannah, Georgia,” Kastel noted.

At the Savannah meeting a giant Dutch-based multi-national conglomerate, Royal DSM N.V./Martek Biosciences, partnered with the nation’s largest dairy processor, Dean Foods, to muscle through approval of DHA/ARA synthetic nutrient oils. The additives, derived from genetically mutated algae and soil fungus, are processed with petrochemical solvents, grown in genetically engineered corn, and formulated for use in infant formula, dairy and other products with a myriad of other unreviewed synthetic ingredients.

“All these elements of the Martek Biosciences products, along with outstanding safety and efficacy concerns, made them inappropriate and illegal in organics,” said Charlotte Vallaeys, Director of Food and Farm Policy for Cornucopia. “So after witnessing this travesty, we decided to take a closer look at how other synthetic additives have been approved for use in organic foods in the past.”

What The Cornucopia Institute investigation found is disturbing to many organic industry stakeholders.

Since the NOSB was not constituted by Congress to be a scientific body, it relies on legally mandated technical reviews, by impartial scientists, of any synthetic materials that are petitioned for use in organics.

Cornucopia found that a small handful of scientists, working for corporate agribusiness, supplied the “independent” analyses to the board. In one example, an executive for Ralston Purina/Beech Nut, Dr. Richard Theuer, authored 45 of 50 technical reviews during a two-year period in the 1990s.

As a case study Cornucopia used the food ingredient carrageenan, a stabilizer and thickening agent that was initially approved for use in organic food in the mid-1990s. Theuer, and two other agribusiness-related food scientists, reviewed carrageenan without emphasizing its impacts on human health and the environment. Carrageenan, derived from seaweed, has been widely used in conventional foods for decades.

“Carrageenan is a well-documented inflammatory agent that has been found, in thousands of experiments in human cells and animals, to cause harmful effects, and low molecular weight carrageenan has been recognized by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Research Council of the United States as a possible human carcinogen,” said Dr. Joanne Tobacman, a leading researcher on carrageenan and its human health impacts at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Low molecular weight, or “degraded,” carrageenan has been found, by industry research, to contaminate food-grade carrageenan. Other research has indicated that digestion, heating, bacterial action, and mechanical processing can increase the amount of degraded carrageenan obtained from higher molecular weight carrageenan. “Due to its unique chemical characteristics, there is no safe form of carrageenan,” Dr. Tobacman added.

“Those of us in the industry, who are committed to the value of wholesome, nutritious foods that has been the hallmark of the organic industry, need the NOSB and the USDA to carefully and impartially review synthetic ingredients like carrageenan,” said Michael Potter, President of Eden Foods, a Clinton, Michigan based manufacturer long viewed as an organic leader.

In an effort to remediate this ongoing scandal, in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Cornucopia demanded that one of the newest appointees to the board, an executive at the giant California berry producer, Driscolls, be removed since she was placed in a slot Congress reserved for an individual who “owns or operates an organic farming operation.”

“We have seen the USDA, in the past, appoint an executive from General Mills, as an example, to a consumer slot on the board. This gross scoffing at the law Congress passed as a safeguard against corporate domination needs to end right now,” Kastel said. “We expected better from the Obama administration. Either the USDA will immediately remediate this problem or we will defend the organic law in federal court.”

Cornucopia’s white paper documents the long-term abuse of congressional intent, by stacking the board with agribusiness operatives, an illegal practice that has stretched over the past three administrations.

Another request in Cornucopia’s letter to Secretary Vilsack was to reform the selection of independent scientists reviewing synthetics in organics, stating that the industry needs an impartial board and the board needs truly impartial expert advisors.

“I wish I was making this up, but one of the newest contractors to fulfill this review function is The Organic Center, the nonprofit offshoot of the Organic Trade Association, an agribusiness lobby group,” Kastel added. “This is the proverbial fox watching the organic chicken coop.”

The Organic Center’s board is chaired by Mark Retzloff, President of Aurora Dairy, a giant factory farm milk producer bottling private-label organic milk for Walmart, Costco and Target. Aurora was found by the USDA in 2007 to have “willfully” violated 14 tenets of federal organic law—likely the largest scandal in organic industry history.

Other members of the Organic Center’s leadership reads like a Who’s Who of giant corporations involved in organics, including four individuals associated with Dean Foods and their WhiteWave division (Horizon and Silk).

“The Organic Center board members have worked, over the years, for many of the very companies seeking approval for use of synthetics in organic food,” noted Cornucopia’s Vallaeys. “Talk about a conflict of interest.”

Despite these problems, Cornucopia’s report is bullish on organics and hopeful that the situation at the USDA can be turned around. There are fewer than 300, mostly benign, non-organic and synthetic compounds that have been approved for use in organics. That number is dwarfed by the many thousands of chemicals used in conventional food production, many of them highly toxic and carcinogenic.

“We implore consumers not to reject organics because a handful of corporations have acted recklessly and the USDA has failed to do their legally mandated job. Organic farmers, and their ethical processing partners, need your support now more than ever,” Kastel added. “And health conscious families deserve authentic organic food.”

The Cornucopia Institute is collecting signed proxies, downloadable from their website’s home page, asking organic industry stakeholders, including farmers and consumers, to sign the proxy and join in the demand that the USDA operate the organic program legally.

The growing dispute over synthetic ingredients is likely to be a hot topic at the next meeting of the National Organic Standards Board, set for May 22-25 in Albuquerque, NM.

“We know that carrageenan is up for review at this meeting and we hope the NOSB will revisit their controversial decision on Martek’s DHA/ARA. We urge the board to take this opportunity to reinforce consumer confidence in the organic label,” said Kastel.

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MORE:

Past Technical Reviews Produced by Agribusiness Insiders
We took the stabilizer/thickener carrageenan (a seaweed derivative) as a case study (and a timely one, as it will be up for a sunset review by the current NOSB at their May 22 meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico).

When carrageenan was first reviewed, in 1995, the NOSB, as required by law, looked at potential environmental or health impacts after examining a Technical Review produced by three experts with ties to corporate agribusiness: Dr. Steve Harper, Director of R&D at Small Planet Foods (now owned by General Mills), Dr. Richard Theuer, Vice President of R&D at Beech Nut, and Dr. Stephen Taylor, Professor of Food Science at the University of Nebraska, a defender of genetic engineering (Dr. Taylor has published studies on GMOs/allergy risk co-authored with agribusiness scientists at DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred—manufacturer of chemicals and GMO seed).

This Technical Review hardly mentioned some potential serious health impacts from “degraded” carrageenan, failing to cite any of the research or to inform the Board that, historically, as much as 25% of carrageenan on the market was categorized as degraded. Current research shows all types of carrageenan can degrade in the body and create serious known health impacts.

The technical review in 1995 also failed to document the known environmental hazards from discharge of alkaline wastewater and the deleterious impacts of seaweed farming to reefs, coastal ecosystems and mangroves—by law, organics is supposed to do no harm.

Carrageenan has once again been recommended for approval in organic foods by the current NOSB’s Handling Committee. As before, no negative environmental impacts and no human health threats were recognized by the industry-friendly Handling subcommittee. And once again, Dr. Theuer has submitted comments in support of its re-approval.

Empowering Consumers in the Marketplace
In an effort to empower organic consumers and wholesale buyers, The Cornucopia Institute has published a number of scorecards rating organic brands on a number of integrity-based benchmarks. They have also published guidance in order to avoid Martek DHA and ARA oils, and carrageenan, in organic food.

It should be noted that before going public with this information The Cornucopia Institute has contacted and brought these concerns to the attention of top USDA political appointees, its National Organic Program leadership and staff, the Organic Trade Association and manufacturers, both regarding carrageenan specifically and the corrupted approval process of synthetics in organics in general. For the most part, we have been ignored or slandered.

We understand the risk in terms of collateral damage to the organic label in this discussion taking place, now, in public. But, as the famed Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel has eloquently stated, “The acquiescence to evil is the worst form of evil.” Hence, silence, at this point, only aids and abets those individuals and entities, in pursuit of profit, that are willing to exploit the trust of organic consumers and competitively injure ethical organic farmers and businesses.

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.

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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:

Food Producer: For over 15 years, North Dakota rancher Gabe Brown has merged back-to-basics agrarian practices with innovative science-based sustainable farming techniques on his 5,400 acre diversified family ranch. For Brown, healthy soil is the renewable resource that sustains all. By making use of a 100 percent zero-till cropping system, mob grazing, and polyculture cover crop and polyculture cash crop rotations, he has successfully transformed conventional grazing and cropping operations into models of regenerative agriculture. Brown’s Ranch also integrates its cow-calf and grass finished livestock operations with a highly diverse cropping rotation, which includes over 25 different cash and cover crops resulting in high yields and strong net profits.

“Being recognized shines the spotlight on the need to practice holistic management and regenerate our resources,” said Brown. “It’s the only sustainable way we can ensure safe, healthy food production for generations to come.”

Food Justice (New Category): As co-founders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a 5,000 strong worker-based human rights organization, Lucas Benitez and Greg Asbed have revolutionized Florida’s $600 million fresh tomato industry, transforming it from one of the most repressive employers in the country to one quickly becoming the most progressive and equitable in the fruit and vegetable industry. CIW is creating today’s blueprint for farmworker justice by spearheading historic fair food agreements with groundbreaking farm labor standards, fair farmworker wages and labor rights education through their Fair Food Program, which is now implemented on over 90 percent Florida’s tomato farms. Today, ten multi-billion dollar national companies have signed on to CIW’s Fair Food Program and CIW continues to forge critical alliances among tomato growers, workers, food retailers and the community.

“Social accountability in our food system starts by truly valuing those workers whose backbreaking labor puts food on our tables every day,” said CIW’s co-founders. “At CIW, we fight to advance human rights in the fields, and we applaud NRDC for recognizing that a sustainable food system must include fair wages and working conditions for farmworkers.”

Young Food Leader: Before the age of 25, Andrea Northup founded the D.C. Farm to School Network, an organization behind the movement for healthier school food in 200 public and charter schools throughout Washington, D.C. Northup is not only transforming school lunch menus by charting alliances between D.C. schools and local food producers, but she is also influencing policy in the nation’s capital. In 2010, Northup was the principal architect of the farm to school provisions in the landmark “Healthy Schools Act”, legislation that makes D.C. one of the first jurisdictions in the country to provide financial incentives to schools that serve fresh, locally grown products and infuse food and nutrition education into classrooms.

“Each day millions of American children receive their main meals at school,” said Northup. “When these school meals incorporate healthy, locally-grown foods, we are able to improve child nutrition, provide economic opportunities for growers, and teach students eating habits that last a lifetime.”

Business Leader: As CEO of Organic Valley for the last 25 years, George Siemon has led the way in organizing organic farmers, securing fair pay prices, and building market demand for organic foods. Under Siemon’s leadership, Wisconsin-based Organic Valley has grown into one of the nation’s leading organic brands and America’s largest cooperative of organic farmers, representing more than 1,700 families nationwide. Notably, Siemon was instrumental in developing the national organic standards for USDA Organic certification. His entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to sustainable agriculture illuminates how businesses can successfully learn from nature and be change agents in defense of our natural resources.

“I’m pleased to receive this award on behalf of our farmer-owners and staff. At Organic Valley, when we talk about sustainability, we mean a triple bottom line of social responsibility, economic stability, and environmental integrity,” said Siemon. “That means keeping farmers on the land, supporting rural communities, and being responsible stewards of the environment — a shared mission with NRDC.”

The 2012 Growing Green Awards panel of judges included Michael Pollan, New York Times best-selling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Myra Goodman, co-founder of Earthbound Farm, Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA and co-founder of Yale Sustainable Food Project, and Nikki Henderson, executive director of People’s Grocery and co-founder of Live Real, a national collaborative of food movement organizations.

See video of the 2012 winners and read more about their work in OnEarth:

Food Producer Gabe Brown: http://bit.ly/GabeBrown

Food Justice Leader Coalition of Immokalee Workers: http://bit.ly/CoalitionOfImmokaleeWorkers

Young Food Leader Andrea Northup: http://bit.ly/AndreaNorthup

Business Leader George Siemon: http://bit.ly/GeorgeSiemon

Photos and b-roll available upon request. See NRDC’s Eat Green fact sheet and Smarter Living page about making food choices that are healthier for you and the environment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, Montana, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org

The real dispute is over valid but competing priorities.

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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.

Yield alone, the team writes, is “…only part of a range of economic, social and environmental factors that should be considered when gauging the benefits of different farming systems.”

This point is often overlooked in discussions of how best to feed the world. Farming methods impact the lives of all who share the ecosystem. They can pollute the environment or make use of what would otherwise have become pollutants. They can affect the nutrient levels in food and the health of farm workers. To assume that the best farming practice is the one that produces the highest yield is like observing that a Lamborghini outraces a bicycle, and thus should be the world’s only vehicle.

The paper asserts that the efficacy of various farming systems is context-dependent, and proposes that the apparent dichotomy between organic and nonorganic is overly simplistic. Hybrid systems, the paper suggests, should be considered in some contexts. Ramankutty used his personal approach to food procurement as an example of how a hybrid system might work.

“I often buy organic food,” he told me. “Partly it’s because of some maybe nonscientific fear of pesticide residues in food — although it looks like scientific evidence for that is not hard to get.

“On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind if a farmer was applying a little bit of chemical fertilizer. I may not buy food if somebody was applying pesticides, but I would certainly not mind if my farmer applied a little bit of chemical fertilizer on his farm. It’s when we use 200 kilograms per hectare compared to maybe 40 or 50 kilograms that the problem arises.”

The paper notes that many organic agriculture systems are deficient in nitrogen, and that production on such farms would benefit from more of it. But most conventional systems have more than enough nitrogen, thanks to the ease and cost of applying chemical fertilizer.

“The problem we have with nitrogen is that we use too much of it, in some parts of the planet,” Ramankutty told me. “Then it gets left behind in the soil, it leaches out into groundwater, causing water quality problems. It runs down rivers and into lakes and causes algal blooms.

“There’s a diminishing return to nitrogen application. If you’re applying more and more fertilizer, plants take up less and less of it. If nitrogen is heavily subsidized, that is if there’s no cost to applying nitrogen, then farmers won’t have any incentive to reduce the amount of nitrogen.”

Organic sources of nitrogen include manure, cover crops, fish emulsion, compost, and other sources, many of them labor-intensive. These sources of nitrogen do more than simply add “N,” as it’s called in the paper. They also add organic matter to the soil, which is crucial for the soil’s microbial activity and helps retain moisture.

Shoveling manure is a lot more work than applying chemical nitrogen. But as long as natural gas (from which the fertilizer comes) is cheap, chemical nitrogen will be too.

In developing countries, the farms considered in the studies analyzed by Seufert et al are export-oriented operations, usually certified organic by international third-party organizations. Ramankutty makes a distinction between subsistence farming (which may be organic by default due to lack of resources, but not intentionally organic), and “intensive organic” methods, which involve active techniques like composting and mulching. Subsistence farmers might not need to become certified organic if they’re not catering to an organic market, but nonetheless the use of organic methods can build soil, conserve water, and grow better crops.

“There is a hypothesis,” Ramankutty said, “that in developing countries, switching from subsistence to intensive organic can be beneficial. We unfortunately couldn’t test that, so all we could say in the paper is that there’s no evidence right now that the hypothesis is true. But that does not mean it’s not true. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Looking forward, Ramankutty said, the team’s next step is “to look at the other side of the equation, the environmental outcomes. What do the environmental outcomes of organic vs. conventional farming look like?”

Those results, when they come, will no doubt further stir the pot in the ever-spirited debate over the best way to produce food. Ramankutty expressed regret that their paper has probably breathed new life into a polarized debate that’s a lot more complicated than a simple dichotomy between organic and conventional.

That said, the data does provide clues as to which practices might help in certain contexts. Several of the studies they analyzed demonstrated that organic techniques offer clear yield advantages in drought conditions, he said.

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

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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.

It relies primarily on locally available renewable resources, which shields farmers from price shocks associated with external farming inputs; it frequently increases farm yields by 100 per cent or more; and it brings higher prices to farmers, since organic produce sells at a premium.

In addition, it helps create jobs in rural regions – as organic inputs are usually produced locally – and helps to stem the tide of migrants from rural areas to African cities.

The UNCTAD strongly supports the growing use of organic farming practices on the continent.

Africa already has more certified organic farms than any other continent – and noted that this form of agriculture comprehensively illustrates the central topic of UNCTAD’s just concluded quadrennial conference in Doha, Qatar: ‘Development-centred globalisation: Towards inclusive and sustainable growth and development.’

Zambia’s first Republican President Kenneth Kaunda, patron of Organic Producers and Processers Association of Zambia (OPPAZ) said “Organic agriculture is extremely important in human life”.

The former head of State who is passionate about organic foods, encouraged the country to engage in organic agriculture.

The conference emphasised the importance of food security, sustainable agriculture, and a transition towards a ‘green’ economy.

It had among its objectives the development of an African Organic Action Plan intended to spur expansion of the organic farming sector, streamline certification and “organic equivalency” systems that allow more vigorous trade in organic goods, and add to the continent’s markets for organic produce.

Organic agriculture in Africa is growing rapidly. More than one million hectares of arable land and at least 530,000 farmers are certified according to organic standards in Africa.

Uganda and Ethiopia have each more than 100,000 certified organic farms and Tanzania has some 85,000. Most of the certified organic production is sold for exports, but there are good organic markets in South Africa and Egypt and emerging markets in countries such as Senegal and Kenya. Many more farmers, from Morocco to Madagascar, from Cairo to Cape Town, practice organic farming.

OPPAZ chief executive officer Munshimbwe Chitalu who spoke on Ubuntu vis-à-vis organic agriculture, said Ubuntu under-pinned organic agriculture which is farming in harmony with nature for social justice and economic development in a sustained environment.

“Organic agriculture sustains the fertility of soils, ecosystems and the health of the people. It also relies on locally adapted improved ecological processes and cycles, and natural biodiversity. It is therefore important that farmers are encouraged to practice organic farming,” said Zambia’s Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Emmanuel Chenda when he officiated at the conference.

The three-day Lusaka meeting was organised by UNCTAD, Organic Producers and Processors Association of Zambia (OPPAZ), the African Union, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and Zambian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock.

Yemi Akinbamijo, head of Agriculture and Food Security from African Union Commission said, “Africa is food deficient, which is why organic farming provides another way of improving food security on the continent.”

Manjo Smith of International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) said one of the achievements of the conference was the establishment of the Southern African regional network that would continue focus on organics in the region adding that there is a lot of research being done on soil fertilisation which is very important for farmers.

She said governments should realise that this is important to get into policies, my hope is for policy makers and governments to understand that GMOs and chemical fertilisers is not an answer, we have seen that organic agriculture is the answer for us because it increases organic production and production of crops so much more in Africa. We can use the materials that we have available.

And FAO representative in Zambia on behalf of the UN Development System in Zambia said sustainable development has been a major issue on the agenda of the UN system.

“In view of the urgency that climate change is imposing on our communities and economies, we need to move into action beyond our good intentions, policies and conferences to stop resources degradation, wasteful consumption, negative habits and customs so that the future generations are not disadvantaged,” said Ad Spijkers.

He said organic agriculture needs to be embraced in an integrated manner with climate change initiatives so that positive synergies are built, harnessed, sustained and improved for the good of our world and a better future.

Spijkers also stated that the UN Development System in Zambia is engaging the Zambian Government in pursuing a green economy through environmentally friendly farming practices and management of natural resources as “our agriculture system is getting into Climate Smart Agriculture with a focus on sustained and resilient production farming systems that have minimum environmental effect to produce food and create jobs.”

At the end of the conference participants called on the European Union (EU) and other actors of the global trade partners to take all possible steps to facilitate the participation of Africa in global organic markets.

This includes a request to recognise as equivalent the East African Organic Products Standard (EAOPS), which was developed through a consultative regional public-private partnership and adopted as the official East African Community organic standard in 2007.

In what they called the Lusaka Declaration on Mainstreaming Organic Agriculture into the African Development Agenda, they also applauded efforts made by the growing number of member States that have embraced the concept of Organic Agriculture.

They urged African governments to include organic agriculture in their policies and programmes, in consultation with the organic/ecological agriculture stakeholders in their countries. The UNCTAD-UNEP “Best Practices for Organic Policy” (UNCTAD/DITC/TED/2007/3) can provide useful guidance.

They also came up with a six pillars of the African Organic Action Plan which are:

1. Research, training and extension: To conduct participatory, interdisciplinary, multi-cultural research that informs stakeholder training and offers appropriate knowledge and skills and innovative solutions to the community.

2. Information and communication: To develop information and communication strategies to sensitise the stakeholders and the general public on the value and practices of ecological organic agriculture.

3. Value chain and market development: To increase trade in ecological/organic products from Africa at domestic, regional and export markets.

4. Networking and partnership: To strengthen synergies among stakeholders and beneficiaries to support ecological organic agriculture through networks and partnerships.

5. Supportive policies and programmes: To support the development and implementation of enabling policies and programmes.

6. Institutional capacity development: To establish, develop and support ecological/organic agriculture institutions in Africa.

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.

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“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.

Frank, who lives 20 miles northwest of Dickinson on his family’s fourth generation farm and serves as the North Dakota Organic Advisory Board’s West Region Producer, began farming in 1992 and was certified as an organic grower in 1996.

“I’ve basically been farming like an organic farmer since I was a kid,” Frank explained. “My folks farmed like organic farmers when I was a kid, and they always farmed that way even though they weren’t certified at the time.”

Depending on the year, weather and what is needed for feed, Frank’s organic farm could have wheat, oats, barley, flax, alfalfa, sweet clover, beef cows or hogs.

But chemicals won’t be found on Frank’s crops, no matter the year.

“Because I don’t spray crops I don’t have to worry about kids or myself working with chemicals, but that also means I may not have that picture perfect, weed-free field,” he said. “Sometimes I may have that, but I’ll also run into years that the fields don’t looks so good if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.”

Organic farming is about seeking advice and thinking outside the box, Frank said.

“It helps to talk to different guys because what works on one farm may not always work best on another farm, and talking to different people will help you get ideas about what may or may not work for you,” he said. “Just think about all of the advice and slowly try it and see how it works for you. Somethings might work great, others may not. Just try.”

Frank Kutka, assistant director at the North Dakota State University Dickinson Research Center, said he knows of three organic farms in Stark County.

“There could be more though and there is certainly plenty of potential if someone feels so inclined to start an organic farm here,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure why it hasn’t picked up here, but change in mindset and all of the reporting that has to be done might have something to do with it.”

The highest concentration of North Dakota’s organic farms is within a 100-mile radius around Bismarck, said Brad Brummond, chair of the North Dakota Organic Advisory Board and North Dakota State University Extension Agent in Walsh County.

“They have soils that sometimes do not respond to high inputs because they’re in a more arid region,” he said. “It’s also a bit more of culture of the people, meaning it’s more the way they grew up farming. Some people may not switch to cutting edge technology, but instead prefer to do things with a more natural approach.

“It’s takes a different kind of mindset. A person needs to be a problem solver, a proactive person who is patient because there is no cure in bottle for them. These farmers need to stop things from happening, not what until a problem arises to find a solution, and that takes a special kind of person. It’s easy to throw Roundup on the field, but that’s not an option in organic system.”

It takes about three years for land to be converted to organic, Brummond said. There are fees associated with becoming a certified organic farmer and costs vary by crop and certification companies.

Consumer demand for organic goods is up, but Brummond said North Dakota needs to do more to regain its status as an industry leader.

“In the early days of organic farming, North Dakota was one of the leading states in organic agriculture but we’ve slipped because we have an aging population and haven’t added a lot of new organic farmers or acres,” he said. “When you have an industry that can’t supply the needs of demand, either we supply product here or people go elsewhere or quit calling. That’s worrisome to me. The question I have now is whether North Dakota is going to participate or not. We don’t have the growers to provide the product right now.”

Compost tea (a mixture of recycled organic matter soaked in water), hydroponic living basil, and organic certification are terms that, at first glance, may not have much of a connection to military veterans. Colin Archipley, a decorated Marine sergeant, and his wife Karen however saw the combination as a win-win when they founded the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program outside San Diego, California.

A veteran and participant of the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training program handles living basil at an organic hydroponic farm, which grows plants in water as opposed to soil. The program, started by decorated Marine sergeant Colin Archipley, passes on agricultural knowledge to veterans to not only provide healing through farming but also to support them in starting their own agricultural enterprises.

Many veterans who have served our country have challenges transitioning to civilian life and struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and high unemployment rates. After three tours in Iraq, Colin found his solace working on the Archipley’s newly-purchased, neglected avocado farm, which sat on 3 acres outside of Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base.

When the Archipleys received their first water bill, they determined their farm needed to be more sustainable. They decided to move to a water-efficient hydroponic system (roots placed in nutrient-rich water instead of soil) that reduces water use by up to 90%. They received a loan from the USDA Farm Service Administration to build a larger greenhouse, tripling their production.

They also were certified organic by California-based CCOF Certification Services (accredited and overseen by the USDA National Organic Program, part of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service) and used their hydroponic system to grow organic basil, tomatoes, and variety of greens and other herbs. Produce is delivered as living plants (with roots still attached) to local farmers markets and stores, which saves water and retains freshness.

Colin wanted to help other veterans heal their wounds through organic farming—and to use their acquired skills to start agricultural businesses of their own. The VSAT program has partnered with local community and state colleges to offer veterans an intensive six-week course to learn how to grow hydroponic crops from seed to market. Participants then take an exam and present their business plan to potential investors, produce buyers, and human resources personnel. At the end of the course, participants have a solid business plan and the know-how to start their own similar operation.

I was able to attend the business plan presentations and graduation of a recent VSAT class, and it was very inspiring to see what the Archipleys have done–both how they have helped fellow combat veterans transition to civilian life and that they saw organic agriculture as part of that path.

The Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training Program has helped over 100 military veterans transition to the civilian work force with other locations on the horizon. One memorable graduate is Mike Hanes, a decorated veteran. He went from being homeless and unable to re-engage in civilian life to creating his own organic hot sauce, DANG!!!, which is now for sale at grocery stores around the country.

Based on the last agricultural census, the average American farmer is 57 years of age, and nearly 30 percent of American farmers are over the age of 65. Nearly 45 percent of the military come from a rural background, and USDA is pushing for 100,000 new farmers. We applaud the Archipleys for continuing to serve their country by supporting our heroes and helping to build the next generation of organic farmers.

The Guardian
by Frederick Kaufman

Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world’s food supply has long been suspected, no one has been able to prove it. The world’s most precious resources may have been transformed into a casino for high rollers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out who is betting how much.

Consequently, the UN general assembly recently convened a high-level debate on speculation in global food commodity markets. The discussion lasted all day before ending with earnest calls for further study of this important issue. In other words, business as usual.

Afterwards, I caught up with one of the afternoon panelists, Michael Greenberger, a former director of the division of trading and markets at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). During his CFTC tenure, Greenberger supervised exchange traded futures and derivatives, which makes him an expert on just those financial instruments that are bringing chaos to global commodity markets.

Unlike the other panelists who spoke to the general assembly, Greenberger was no longer debating whether or not speculation had skewed the global price of food. Instead, he was trying to figure out how to close down the casino. The Dodd-Frank act – the latest, greatest attempt to regulate the commodity business – has been thoroughly defanged by Wall Street interests.

Greenberger is not only a reformer, but a law school professor at the University of Maryland, and something of a historian. “Dodd-Frank was a corroboration and an endorsement of a principal that Franklin Delano Roosevelt devised in 1934, when the entire derivative market was agricultural,” he said. Back then, farmers were complaining they had no control over the pricing of their product – food – because the commodity exchanges were being overrun by “locals”, the Chicago speculators who went downtown to bet on the price. “As far back as 1892, you have farmers testifying to Congress about this,” said Greenberger.

Roosevelt’s administration came up with a simple solution: position limits. If you were not a participant in the food business – neither a farmer nor a baker – you could trade no more than 5,000 futures contracts. This prescription worked well, and endured until the late 1990s, when position limit exemptions were quietly granted to a number of large investment banks. Wall Street subsequently rushed into commodities, and the world is still reeling.

Commodity markets stand at the base of the $600tn global derivatives business, a generally unregulated miasma of over-the-counter swaps, index fund madness, and Wall Street roulette that ignited the mortgage meltdown, toppled AIG and Lehman Brothers, spurred the global currency crisis, and produced the present sorry state of the global economy, whereby a few chosen hedge fund managers haul in billions of dollars while 1 billion human beings find themselves unable to scrape together enough to eat.

Position limits are a proven dampener on speculative hysteria, and were supposed to be a part of the Dodd-Frank reforms. Gary Gensler, chairman of the CFTC, held hearings on the subject. But as the vote neared, noted Greenberger: “Wall Street overwhelmed the CFTC.”

The upshot is that Dodd-Frank’s position limit rule presently states a speculator can hold up to 25% of the market in global wheat or corn. That may sound like quite a lot of grain, but 25% is an improvement on the previous state of affairs, as estimates suggest today’s grain markets are up to 80% speculative. The new rule would not necessarily stop the futures markets from being controlled by speculative interests, but it would lessen the impact of individual speculative parties, who might be forced to cut back their market positions to the required fraction. The rule would also clarify the previously opaque issue of who holds the most chips in the global grain casino. Nevertheless, spooked by the dread spectre of regulation, bankers sued. As a result, the fate of the CFTC’s position limit rule will be decided in court.

Behind the position limit dispute lies a more profound problem. Even if the CFTC’s new regulations were to be upheld, ubiquitous “over-the-counter” swaps would undermine their effectiveness. “Swaps” is the general term for a wide variety of deals or bets that two financial parties can agree to make, but – unlike the bets financial institutions make on exchanges such as futures markets and stock markets – the size and the nature of the over-the-counter deals are not matters of public information. As a result, over-the-counter swaps enable bankers to camouflage the nature and size of their speculative positions or holdings by means of secret arrangements with other market participants. Before the CFTC can do anything about over-the-counter swaps, they must define the term, which unfortunately they have yet to do. When will the definition appear? “It’s going to be months,” said Greenberger.

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only way to stop speculation in food commodities is neither high-level debate nor regulation – how quaint and New Dealish – but criminalisation. Indeed, US senator Maria Cantwell and US congressman Ed Markey are now crafting a bill to make gambling on the world’s food supply illegal.

So when can we expect a bill to hit the floor? “They have been working on this for a long time,” said Greenberger.

In other words: not yet.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A fast-spreading plague of “super weeds” taking over U.S. farmland will not be stopped easily, and farmers and government officials need to change existing practices if food production is to be protected, industry experts said on Thursday.

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“This is a complex problem,” said weed scientist David Shaw in remarks to a national “summit” of weed experts in Washington to come up with a plan to battle weeds that have developed resistance to herbicides.

Weed resistance has spread to more than 12 million U.S. acres and primarily afflicts key agricultural areas in the U.S. Southeast and the corn and soybean growing areas of the Midwest.

Many of the worst weeds, some of which grow more than six feet and can sharply reduce crop yields, have become resistant to the popular glyphosate-based weed-killer Roundup, as well as other common herbicides.

Monsanto Co’s Roundup worked well for many years. It became prevalent with the commercialization of “Roundup Ready” crops Monsanto developed to tolerate the weedkiller, making it easy for farmers to treat their fields.

But now super weeds have developed a resistance to Roundup, and farmers are scrambling to figure out how to combat their weeds.

“We don’t have that next technology. We have to get back to the fundamentals,” said Shaw, who chairs a task force that is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on how to tackle weed resistance problems.

Several farmers spoke out about their struggles at the summit, as did experts from the USDA and crop consultants.

“This is our number one issue,” said Arkansas crop consultant Chuck Farr. “It is a challenge every day, every field.”

Harold Coble, an agromist and weed scientist with the USDA, called the problem of weed resistance a “game changer” and said farmers must become more versatile. Too many have simply been relying on the chemicals for too long, he said.

A joint report from the USDA and the Weed Science Society of America said “a significant proportion of growers are not practicing adequate proactive herbicide resistance management.” Such “indiscriminate” use of herbicides is effectively making the problem worse, year after year.

It will be at least 20 years before any new chemical modes of action are available in the market for farmers to fight weeds with, said Coble.

Many weed experts recommended at least a partial return to limited tillage, which is largely frowned upon because it encourages soil erosion. Some experts recommended use of “cover” crops, planted to cover a field after harvest to stymie weed development while adding nutrients to the soil.

The industry is also looking at the use of multiple herbicide mechanisms with newer and more specific labeling to combat varying weed densitites. Experts discussed using equipment that can collect weeds and weed seed at harvest along with grains, so weed seed can be removed and destroyed.

Because short-term strategies can be costly for farmers, many industry players would like to see government or industry incentives to help producers.

“Why would I want to do something that is going to cost me more and make me do more work,” said Steve Smith, a corn and soybean farmer. “This is what growers are saying.”

Smith is also a member of the Save Our Crops coalition that is fighting a new Dow Chemical proposed herbicide that he and other critics say will be harmful and exacerbate weed resistance over the long term.

Dow is seeking regulatory approval of a newly formulated herbicide built on traditional 2,4-D chemical herbicide that would be marketed in conjunction with genetically altered 2,4-D resistant crops.

Critics say the Dow products can do more harm than help, but the company and supporters say it is at least a short-term answer.

“We need the technology now,” said John Davis, an Ohio corn grower who is helping Dow promote its new 2,4-D products.

The Seattle Times
By Erin Flemming

PCC Natural Markets is unveiling Tuesday a new alternative for dealing with food waste at its Issaquah location.

For the past two years, the local grocery co-op has been working with WISErg, a Washington startup developing a “harvester” machine to convert food waste into liquid fertilizer. All nine PCC locations will carry the fertilizer, a brown liquid the consistency of water.

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Diana Crane, director of sustainability at PCC, said the co-op is testing the device and will soon decide whether to continue the partnership with WISErg.

She said the company was excited to participate in the pilot project.

“There was no downside for us,” she said. Once the harvester is commercially available, she said, “I think people will be beating down their doors.”

After working together at Microsoft, Jose Lugo and Larry LeSueur, co-founders of Issaquah-based WISErg, left in 2005 to independently pursue other projects. They both ended up looking into the possibilities of green projects involving anaerobic digestion — essentially composting without air.

In 2009, they reconnected through a mutual friend and formed WISErg, in the hopes of creating a new way to deal with food waste.

Similar anaerobic digesters have been used in agriculture and wastewater-treatment plants for years, but Lugo and LeSueur said they saw a need for this kind of system in an urban environment.

At first, the two co-founders financed their startup costs with some help from family and friends. Last year, WISErg obtained more funding from Microsoft alumni and Northwest Energy Angels to get the harvester up and running.

Brian Arbogast, an investor with Northwest Energy Angels who knew LeSueur from Microsoft, said he sees a lot of potential in the WISErg business model.

“The idea that you can mine urban waste and get valuable stuff out of it is very compelling,” he said. “I love the fact that they’re taking something that is a cost to companies … and then turning it into a product that is of high value.”

The WISErg harvester is made up of two large metal structures, the food-waste loading station and the processing unit. Employees of PCC dump organic materials into the loading system, where the material is weighed, ground up and transported into a silver structure resembling a silo.

In the silo, nutrients and liquid are extracted from the organic matter. The resulting slurry — which Lugo said is about the consistency of chili — is transported about every 10 days to WISErg’s processor.

There, it is broken down through anaerobic digestion, and goes through a chemical-stabilization process to create the liquid fertilizer.

One of the formulations has been approved by the Washington State Department of Agriculture for use in organic farming. It starts at $8 for a 32-ounce container.

The other formulation, with a higher level of nitrogen, has to pass national certification for use in organic farming, which could happen this year, said Tim Robie, organic-fertilizer engineer for WISErg. This variety starts at $12 for 32 ounces.

LeSueur and Lugo said their top priority when developing the harvester was simple: minimizing the nasty odor that comes with decomposing food.

LeSueur said they scrapped an earlier model of the machine because it couldn’t be serviced without an odor problem, and switched to the enclosed design.

“No matter how pretty or functional the system is, if it smells bad, nobody wants that in there,” Lugo said.

The harvesters will cost from $40,000 to $55,000 per store, plus $350 or more in monthly service costs, according to WISErg, which projects purchasers will get a return on their investment within seven years.

LeSueur said he hopes the idea of a “full-circle” waste cycle will appeal to other large producers of food waste, and that they are open to lease and purchase options for the harvesters at this point.

“What we realized very quickly is that we’re fortunate to be in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest because culturally people are receptive to the concept of composting or doing something different with this organic waste other than landfill,” LeSueur said. “But … they’re so focused on the traditional composting that they don’t necessarily see the value of it.”

When WISErg approached PCC, the store saw the “full-circle” benefits beyond just saving on compost pickup.

PCC sends its food waste to the Cedar Grove compost facility, but the sheer volume is difficult to manage, Crane said.

Brandon Baker, director of operations for WISErg, said the Issaquah PCC’s food waste, including organic material from its juice bar, totals approximately 600 to 800 pounds a week.

“It was hard for us to imagine that we were creating so much waste and not doing anything productive with it,” Crane said.

Debbi Montgomery, the Issaquah store’s director, said she’s excited to carry the fertilizer and also hopes to reduce compost pickup from three times a week to one.

She said the harvester has been received well by store staff. “They’re really pumped about it.”

Erin Flemming: 206-464-2718 or eflemming@seattletimes.com

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Organic and other agro-ecological farming systems can help the world feed itself, but in addition to changing our farming systems, we need to eat differently, waste less food and change how we feed our livestock. These are the main conclusions from a recent Soil Association report, Feeding the Future.

Today we produce enough food to satisfy the nutritional requirements of every person on the plant. Yet nearly 1 billion people are hungry and another billion are malnourished, most of them living in poor rural areas of the Global South. At the same time, at least a billion people are overweight or obese, mostly resident in richer Western countries.

Predictions indicate that by 2050 there will be 9 billion people in the world. Some have argued that, in order to accommodate for this, we would need to increase our food production by 70%. This argument rests on two assumptions; (i) that there will be no reduction in the consumption patterns of the Global North, (ii) and that the current Western diet, involving much higher quantities of meat and dairy products, will spread to the Global South. But there is another way.

A different system

Right now, 35–40% of all cereals produced worldwide are fed to livestock, and this could rise to 50% by 2050 if meat consumption continues to rise as predicted. If all cereals were fed to people rather than animals, we could feed an extra 3.5 billion people. If meat and dairy consumption were held at levels reached in 2000, 400 million tonnes of cereals would be available for human consumption, enough to feed an additional 1.2 billion people in 2050. Replacing meat mainly fed on grains, with beef, lamb and mutton from animals grazing on grass, would not only provide better quality meat, but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing food waste is also crucial. Globally, around one third of the food produced for human consumption is either lost or wasted. The majority of this wastage occurs in Europe and North America and food wastage low income countries is mainly caused by financial and technical limitations in harvesting, storage, infrastructure and packaging.

Scientists have modelled ways to feed 9 billion people in 2050 on healthy diets, in an environmentally sustainable way. These models have shown that waste reduction could reduce food demand by 25% in richer countries. A further study found that organic agriculture could feed a world population of 9.2 billion in 2050 if relatively modest diets were adopted and equality in food distribution was assured. These scenarios assume that countries like the UK will both produce food differently and eat differently. It is clear, for both environmental and health reasons, that diets must change.

Find out more

Our report ‘Feeding the Future’ provides a summary of the latest research on how organic food can feed the world, while our report ‘Telling Porkies’ looks in detail at claims around the level of future food production needed.

The previous article was written by the British Council’s Green Ambassadors who took part in the closing Earth Debate Dinner, details of which are in article 2. In order to inject international perspectives into the Earth Debates, British Council invited forty delegates from countries around the world, to take part in an all day workshop on Rio+20 and the Earth Debate. Participants discussed the topics covered in the Earth Debates series – adding experiences from their countries – and prepared short statements, which they presented to their tables at the dinner in the evening. The following four articles include short insights from some of the Ambassadors on the aspects of a green economy they believe to be most important.

The above article was written by a British Council Green Ambassador who took part in the closing Earth Debate Dinner, details of which are in article 2. To inject international perspectives into the Earth Debates, British Council invited forty delegates from countries around the world, to take part in an all day workshop on Rio+20 and the Earth Debate. Participants discussed the topics covered in the Earth Debates series – adding experiences from their countries – and prepared short statements, which they presented to their tables at the dinner in the evening. The following four articles include short insights from some of the Ambassadors on the aspects of a green economy they believe to be most important.