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Washington,
April 15 – Scores of organic farmers, processors and distributors from across
the U.S.
fanned out across Capitol Hill Wednesday and Thursday in support of more
funding for organic agriculture research and for organic standards enforcement.
This followed encouraging words from USDA Deputy Secretary Deputy Kathleen
Merrigan who told the group that “President Obama, Secretary Vilsack, USDA in
general, we’re committed to the continued success of organic agriculture.”
Speaking
in the opening session of the 2010 Policy Conference hosted
by Organic Trade Association (OTA) and the Organic Farming Research Foundation
(OFRF), Merrigan said “We’re working very diligently to uphold the
organic standards and protect the integrity of organic products. We will
protect the strength of organic certification and we’re working to create new
opportunities for organic and other kinds of kinds of growers through the
promotion of local and regional food systems.”
Merrigan noted that USDA’s survey of organic farms
this year showed that “despite real challenges, organic producers are strong
and growing. The survey found 14,540 organic farms in all 50 states,” now
expected to generate over $27 billion in sales this year. She added that “In
the past USDA has not played a strong enough role in enforcement and this
administration intends to change that. . . This is the age of enforcement. We
will protect farmers who play by the rules and consumers who pay premiums for
organic products.” To support organic agriculture, she said “we increased the
budget for the organic program by 75% and have proposed an additional 45%
increase in FY 11. That brings the program to about $10.1 million.”
Along
with more USDA funding, Merrigan promised “expanded use of pesticide residue
sampling to identify problems such as co-mingling, inadequate buffer zones and
fraud and to improve overall organic integrity. We will be conducting market
surveillance of organic labels.”
OTA
Executive Director Christine Bushway pointed out that “this industry is
continuing to grow even during the recession, not at the 22% rate, but still over
5%.” And while some purists complain about large corporate interests now moving
in to capture organic premiums, Bushway told Agri-Pulse that “We have had large companies move into organic for
obvious reasons. Those big-name companies have also helped to pull organic up
to where it is today. And they were needed. We’re still only three and a half
percent of the food production in this country, but the big companies have
helped us to get there and we’re still growing. They are not the enemy.”
Responding
to organic growers concerned about inadequate enforcement and still unfinished
rule writing, Miles McEvoy, Deputy Administrator of
USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), acknowledged that much more needs to be
done to improve program integrity. But he predicted that the situation will
improve if NOP funding and staff continue to increase from the $3.87 million with
16 staff in FY ’09 and $6.97 million with 28 staff now to the hoped-for $10.1
million with 40 staff for FY ’11.
Other speakers spoke out strongly in favor of increased
USDA funding for organic research, maintaining that conventional agriculture
continues to get a disproportionate share despite organic agriculture’s rapid
growth. They noted in particular that too much is being spent on genetic
engineering at the expense of the conventional breeding research which organic
growers rely on.
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