Steemit Exclusive: Agorist Organic Farmers

This article was written exclusively for Steemit.

The popularity of organic food continues to surge as consumers look for cleaner eating options, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long been the arbiter of standards for the growing industry. But the government agency is failing to set adequate standards for organically grown food, and as a result, a group of organic farmers just banded together to create their own.

Though the USDA has controlled organic standards through the National Organic Program since 2000, its guidelines have failed to satisfy some farmers. Most recently, the agency just dropped Obama-era rules that tightened standards for the welfare of animals used in meat labeled organic.

Other issues include the USDA’s willingness to allow the use of pesticides and chemicals and its classification of crops grown through hydroponics as organic despite the fact that the process does not use soil.

In one instance, the USDA cleared an organic dairy farm of violating standards even though agents had failed to sufficiently audit its animal grazing practices. Further, one test of the farm’s milk products showed it had more chemicals than other organic brands.

As the Denver Post noted in covering that story:

“The USDA typically does not inspect a farm to see whether it meets USDA organic standards and is worthy of the ‘USDA Organic’ seal. Instead, an ‘organic’ farm hires its own inspection agency, or certifier, to judge whether it meets USDA organic standards. Most inspections are announced days or weeks in advance.”

Further, conventionally grown corn and soy have been improperly labeled organic, and the certification of everything from milk and eggs to chicken has been called into question.

Though private entities like the California Certified Organic Farmers initially upheld respected standards for organic food, they currently follow the USDA’s questionable regulations.

Rather than waiting for the government to fix these guidelines or for state-affiliated private certification groups to improve them, a group of organic farmers recently launched the Real Organic Project, which aims to provide a better standard of accountability to the organic food industry than the government is currently providing.

“Can we trust the USDA to protect organic integrity?” the organization asks on its website announcing their new mission, criticizing lobbying efforts by the “Coalition For Sustainable Organics (in their Senate testimony), the American Farm Bureau, and the National Pork Producers Council” and claiming those special influences corrupt policy and standards. The Coalition for Sustainable Organics endorses the USDA’s current standards while the National Pork Producers Council spent over $2 million on lobbying efforts in 2017 and the American Farm Bureau spent over $4 million.

The Real Organic Project believes that when it comes to the National Organic Program, “[m]oney will decide what is called ‘certified organic’ and what isn’t.” According to Dave Chapman, a longtime organic farmer who runs Long Wind Farm in Vermont and is participating in the new project:

“I got involved when I started seeing a lot of hydroponic tomatoes certified as organic showing up in the market, about five years ago. We made a really good faith effort to reform the organic program, but we realized [certification of hydroponics] was not the only egregious failure—the NOP [National Organic Program] was very weak on animal welfare, too.”

This month, a newly established standards board made up of 15 members from the organic farming industry — including “9 farmer members, as well as representatives from NGOs, stores, consumers, scientists, and certifiers” — will meet to establish new guidelines for organic food. Though they will continue to use USDA standards as a base, they will add on more stringent requirements. When products are deemed to adhere to them, they will receive an add-on label. The board will ultimately meet once a year to reassess the guidelines, and in its first year, will start with a small pilot program that includes a select number of farms.

The Real Organic Project will also have an executive board and an advisory board, but one key component of the movement relies on consumers to help drive change. The “Just Ask” effort will call on people who seek organic foods to inquire about the source of their food:

It urges “eaters all over the country... to ask the staff where they shop whether the certified organic tomatoes and berries offered are hydroponic or are they real organic grown in the soil. And eaters will ask if the eggs and meat and milk came from CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations] or from farms where the animals got real access to pasture every day.”

Hopefully, by engaging the public and encouraging more proactive shopping habits, the scope of the organic market will change more rapidly and respond better to the need for cleaner, truly sustainable options.

As the government continues to embrace special interests and fails to adequately protect the public that funds them (as is the case with nearly every government agency from the military to the NSA and FBI), non-government solutions rooted in community efforts and consumer participation seem poised to drive human progress far more effectively than the state-sponsored organizations currently claiming to do so.