WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2015 - There’s a ton of help coast-to-coast, and
more on the way, for farmers transitioning to organic.
Organic producer groups say a rally in their ranks is needed as the
total number and acreage of American organic farms is
slipping (even though organic food sales are soaring).
Despite the expectation of superior long-term profits (see sidebar) from
organic commodities, aspiring organic operators have to significantly alter
their practices, and absorb the costs of doing so, while waiting through a
mandated three years for USDA organic certification before they can ring up the
organic market’s premium prices.
John Bobbe, executive director of OFARM, the biggest U.S.
network of organic grain farmers, agrees that moving from “prescription
farming” of one or two crops to an organic system that is rotational with
diverse crops and perhaps livestock can be a high hurdle. To evaluate the move, and then complete it
successfully, he suggests hooking up with an area organic farming group. In the
leading organic state, the California
Certified Organic Farmers, for example, is both the certifying agency and
the trade association that mentors candidate organic producers.
Bobbe ticks off a list of such groups that will help those striving to farm organically: the Northern Plains Sustainable
Agriculture Society, the Ohio
Ecological Food and Farm Association, plus the Midwest
Organic & Sustainable Education Service, which holds the nation’s biggest annual
organic farmers conference, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in February. Also, the Iowa
Organic Conference, held each November, is another event offering a ton of education and
mentoring for beginning organic farmers.
Within a few months, OFARM itself will offer a new economic crutch to
help some producers in their third year toward certification. Its new
trademarked Sustainable
Transition Verified (STV) label will designate products for buyers
who want feed grain or other commodities produced under organic practices,
though not yet certified. The STV designation “will allow the farmers to
extract some additional money out of the marketplace,” Bobbe says.
Nate Lewis, crop and livestock specialist for the Organic Trade
Association, points out that special marketing labels and designations for
products from transitioning farms have been available in West Coast states for
decades, and shoppers have long selected “transition” fruits and vegetables at
grocery stores. He says OTA is working with USDA on a national earmark that
transitioning farmers could get through USDA’s Process
Verified Program. Like OFARM’s STV program, organic certifiers would be contracted to
conduct the on-farm verifications.
Lewis says some dairy, poultry and other livestock operations are
pursuing dependable, long-term organic feed and forage supplies, and are ready
to contract with a transitioning farm with the promise of its future organic
production. “They will simply drop those (transitional) streams into commerce,
and eat the difference,” he says.
The biggest new resource for prospective and transitioning organic
farmers arrived on-line in November: the Organic Transition: A Business
Planner for Farmers, Ranchers and Food Entrepreneurs, 180 pages of
guidance, help with strategy and execution, electronic worksheets and more, produced by a team of experts through
USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. It’s
designed to help in deciding whether or not to go organic and, for those who
do, with the transition.
Meanwhile, Florida Organic Growers and
USDA’s National Organic Program recently posted their joint online series of 26
videos to coach farmers on the decision to go organic and with the transition
itself. Called Bite by Bite, the videos
feature organic farmers giving step-by-step overviews of organic production
requirements and the road to organic certification.
Also, cash assistance is available for
organic transitioners in the form of the USDA Environmental Quality Assistance
Program grants. The 2014 farm bill added the EQIP
Organic Initiative, tailoring EQIP to provide cost-share grants to transitioning farmers
to develop conservation plans, establish buffer zones and pollinator habitat,
improve irrigation efficiency, crop rotations and nutrient management, and so
forth. A farmer’s contract under this initiative is capped at $20,000 a year
and $80,000 over six years.
What’s more, a farmer who completes
certification can get a 75 percent reimbursement, up to $750, of certification
fees. The $750 maximum is available for each type of operation (crops, wild crops,
livestock, and handling) on which the farmer is certified.
In the dairy sector, Organic
Valley offers a wealth of technical and financial help to farmers both during
their three-year path to certification and after. The organic dairy cooperative
(1,500 farms in 36 states) is the nation’s biggest. It has its own Farm
Resources Department that offers both transitioning and regular members
guidance from veterinarians, agronomists, livestock nutritionists and others.
There’s more. Wade Miller, Organic Valley’s farm
profitability coordinator, says the co-op has begun paying transitioning
farmers a bonus of $3.50 per hundredweight for all their milk in their final
year of transition (though the non-organic milk itself is sold elsewhere).
Plus, he says, next year the co-op will start making cropland transition
payments to help transitioning farms recoup economic losses because yields
always droop between termination of conventional cropping and development of
organic soils.
Meanwhile, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is also
retooling rules for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), now USDA’s
biggest conservation program, including changes that may make it more
user-friendly for organic farmers. The new version of CSP is due out next month
along with an upcoming guidebook for agency staff and farmers to more smoothly
link up conservation practices and programs with organic transition and
certification.
#30
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