By JACOB ADELMAN Associated Press
San Jose Mercury News
LOS ANGELES – Organic grower Phil McGrath plays by the rules to keep his Ventura County strawberry and vegetable farm certified organic.
So suspicions that at least two fertilizer companies – one of which was recently raided by federal agents – have been peddling synthetic fertilizer as the natural stuff makes him fear they may cheapen the “organic” label he grows under.
“It brings the term and the industry down a couple notches,” he said.
The state’s major organic certifier, the California Certified Organic Farmers, said it won’t penalize farmers or revoke their endorsements because it recognizes none had knowingly used the spiked fertilizer.
But the situation has resulted in a blow to the integrity of the organic market, prompting new industrywide efforts to test and verify fertilizers that will be the focus of hearings Tuesday by the state Senate Committee on Food and Agriculture.
“The oversight of the organic industry from a fertilizer perspective is kind of like the wild West,” said committee chairman Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter.
As the organic produce market expands from a cadre of small conscientious growers to a massive industry, some farmers are turning to low-cost and highly potent organic fertilizers to make up for shrinking margins.
That demand has resulted in allegations of products being marketed that are too good to be truly organic. Their use threatens a market based on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for products seen as better for their health and the environment.
The two products implicated had been popular fertilizers among organic growers, though information on the amount produced is not publicly available, said Michael Jarvis, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
“This is a great example of a gross violation of the rules in which case consumers aren’t getting what they expected,” said Urvasi Rangan, a senior environmental health scientist with Consumers Union.
The most recent allegations surround Port Organic Products Inc., near Bakersfield, where county environmental health experts found thousands of gallons of aqueous ammonia, an ingredient used in synthetic fertilizers, in 2005 and 2007, inspection documents showed.
Kern County environmental health director Matthew Constantine said his staff informed the state agriculture department and California Certified Organic Farmers about the finds in September 2007.
The Port Organic factory was the target of a Jan. 22 search by FBI and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, said U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Lauren Horwood.
Horwood said she could not discuss allegations contained in the search warrant because of an ongoing USDA investigation that may involve other companies, but the California Certified Organic Farmers quickly banned the growers it endorses from using Port Organic fertilizers.
Growers earn an organic label from the CCOF or other certifying agents by showing that they manage their farms without synthetic pesticides, fertilizers or other chemicals.
CCOF spokeswoman Jane Baker did not return a phone message Monday seeking details of the specific cause of the ban on Port Organic products.
A phone message left with Port Organic was not immediately returned.
Allegations surrounding the company followed revelations that another manufacturer, the now-defunct California Liquid Fertilizer, sold fertilizer spiked with the synthetic ingredient ammonium sulfate for years before the California Food and Agriculture secured its removal from the market, according to documents first obtained by The Sacramento Bee.
State agriculture department officials were notified of the problem in June 2004, but the Gonzales-based company’s product remained available until January 2007, when the company agreed to terms that kept the California Food and Agriculture from taking further action against it, the documents showed.
Boston-based Converted Organics Inc., which has since acquired California Liquid Fertilizer’s parent company, declined to provide contact information for former Chief Executive Peter Townsley.
William H. Bent, a USDA compliance officer, wrote in a July 2007 letter to CDFA organic program manager Ray Green that the USDA had received complaints that Green’s program had long-standing knowledge that California Liquid’s product contained ingredients that couldn’t be used on organic farms “but failed to act appropriately to enforce the organic rules and penalize the cheaters.”
Bent did not immediately return a phone message Monday seeking details of the review and its results.
Florez said he plans to grill CDFA officials Tuesday on why it took them so long to pull the faulty fertilizer off the market.
“We really want to put CDFA on the hot seat in this,” he said.
Jarvis defended the time it took the state agency to finish its investigation.
“We had an investigator that was diligently pursuing this for years,” he said. “It’s not an easy case to make and it takes a lot of testing and sampling and detective work.”
Florez said he also hopes to get details on the federal investigation involving Port Organic Products and to explore instituting a more intensive testing regimen and stiffer penalties for selling spiked fertilizer.
Meanwhile, produce giant Natural Selection Foods LLC, which had used the California Liquid Fertilizer product, has developed a new test to evaluate the fertilizers used on the roughly 33,000 acres where its Earthbound Farm organic products are grown and has started making on-site visits to manufacturers, spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said.
California Certified Organic Farmers was also stepping up its inspections. The certifiers were compiling a list of makers of some liquid fertilizers with high levels of nitrogen – which are expensive to achieve using organic ingredients – and would require those producers to submit to on-site inspections that have not been previously required, the CCOF announced.
Judith Redmond, whose Full Belly Farms is outside Sacramento, said she hopes those steps keep synthetic ingredients out of the fertilizer she uses sparingly during seasons when her heirloom tomatoes other organic vegetables need an extra kick.
She said she’s spent up to $2,000 on fertilizer that she’s no longer permitted to use. But even worse, she believes she’s hurt the soil that she nurtures with composting and other organic practices by introducing synthetic chemicals.
“The products that were used are actually really detrimental to a good, healthy organic soil,” she said. “We were sold a product that wasn’t what they said and the CDFA was asleep at the wheel.”
