Johanns alarmed over USDA’s organic “niche” zeal, even before it boosts conversion funds. (Oh yes, 2008 organic sales surge.)

Odd…the same day I get word of Senator (formerly Mr. Bush’s Agriculture Secretary) Johanns’ “let’s not get crazy about organic” warning to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) back on April 29, I also get word that this “niche market” (his term) actually grew by 17.1 percent overall in 2008, despite a tough economic environment. 

The Organic Trade Association reported today that organic food sales were up 15.8 percent to $22.9 billion, while non-food sales jumped 39.4 percent to $1.648 billion. Let’s see… what other legal crops or ag sectors that contribute richly to ecological health, fight global warming and open up so many opportunities for new entrants are growing at that rate, and have been growing by double-digits for a decade?

Then, late this morning, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), said the move to release $50 million for the plan was one of the biggest policy successes for the organic community in the past two decades. OFRF spokesmen said:
 

Now, back to Johanns. Nebraska’s Kolnkgin.com

 carries a transcript of the NAFB speech, in which he continues the “it’s just a marketing thing” treatment that characterized his role as ag secretary. Truth is, organics is a vital and ever-unruly cultural and agricultural movement driven by leadership and consumer interested in healthy soil, nutritional quality, whole ecological systems and the integrity of farmer-eater-community connections. Yes, some of its sectors as taking a beating in the current downturn, exposing serious infrastructure issues (organic dairy, for one). Sure people and corporations are scamming the system, but that’s not what Johanns is worried about.

My hunch: He doesn’t want the USDA to admit in public or start to run its programs like the “sound science” he claims to believe in is every week validating more and more of the historic contentions of organic pioneers and current leaders, from nutritional density in the food, to improved eco-system health when farmers don’t routinely apply biocides, to the capacity of organic systems to manage pests through a suite of non-toxic options.

Johanns said:

Back to the dangers of organic zeal…Johanns said, "It is fine to romanticize that farming should return to its agrarian beginnings…” (his characterization, for some reason, of organic agriculture), and then says, “But the world does change, and farming has gotten better, and better, and better,” citing reduction in the rate of soil erosion due to no-till agriculture using conventional approaches, including herbicides and chemical fertilizers.

Let's not romantize any farming system in ag policy, but move to farming that works for the future. U.S. farming continues to get still better and better, as farmers of every stripe transform their practices to more biologically based systems and reduce their dependence on purchased fertility and pest control as they learn to develop a systems approach where these benefits are just part of the package. As they see that they can sequester more carbon through stacking biologically sound practices that also lower their environmental impact, they see new hope.”

The fact that the organic farming sector (3.5 percent of food product sales, 2 percent of the crops, far less than 1 percent of the farmers) is as small as it is stems in no small part to the tiny dollar flow invested in organic research by the USDA and private companies to date. Johanns knows that the USDA and agribusiness have dumped billions and billions of dollars to sustain and improve conventional systems, train farmers to believe these were their best hope, and entice the country and the world to consume absolutely as much of the commodity output as possible.

We’re a long way from a “fair and balanced” federal farm policy that threatens to tip the balance away from the agricultural status quo. (Unless things are really as precarious as they seem, from a sustainable perspective.) The USDA’s symbolic steps so far increase visibility of the organic option, open to any farmer, because of the great economic, ecological and sustainability potential that is so little explored at this point. The practices proven to work within organic systems can become the new backbone of U.S. agriculture, one that will be more resilient and healthier in all ways than what we have at present.

But that will take some zeal, within the USDA and especially beyond it.
~ Greg Bowman

P.S. There were mainline ag reporters grilling Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan after the Earth Day dedication of the to-be USDA certified-organic People’s Garden in front of USDA headquarters. They were, fairly intensely, trying to clarify whether she was saying organics was in any superior to non-organic agriculture.

She deftly avoided saying anything very quotable on the matter, but I was struck by how this high-profile organic mini-garden, coupled with her appointment as a visible organic advocate, seemed to rise to the level a possible existential threat to the hulking reality of entrenched agricultural interests. Visions of the mouse and the elephant came to mind.