Concurrent with consumers beginning to ask for pesticide-free food products, farm-ers who had begun to experience the repercussions of conventional agriculture—a decline in soil and environmental health, the loss of profits due to the expanding global market for food, and the loss of rural culture—were drawn to organic prac-tices. There was also a growing community of formerly urban residents who were drawn “back to the land” and, desiring to rebuild the human-environment relation-ship, were naturally called to organic practices. These two groups constituted the first wave of American organic farmers. The meeting point between the increasing awareness of detrimental farming practices and farmers looking for a way back to the right ways of farming gave rise to the seed of organic agriculture as an industry.
The organic farm of the 1960s and 1970s epitomized many of the values that under-lie the contemporary mythos of organic: small in scale, focused on direct markets, aimed at revitalizing rural communities.
The 1970s and 1980s saw tremendous growth in consumer demand for organic food in the United States. This growth was largely a result of the heightened aware-ness between food and human health that Carson initiated. Core consumers tended to seek organic products directly from farmers, farmers’ markets, and local food co-ops. It was not until major food safety issues began to surface, however, that organic moved into the mainstream in America.
The Alar incident of the late 1980s demonstrated consumers’ willingness to respond immediately to perceived threats from agricultural chemicals. Alar is a material used on apples postharvest to preserve crispness and appearance from field
to market. In 1989, the CBS television series 60 Minutes reported that residues of the chemical on apples posed health threats to children, increasing their risks of contracting certain kinds of cancer by up to 100 times.
Apple sales immediately plummeted. Apple growers in Washington State, the country’s leading apple producer, estimated losses upwards of $200 million (Smith, 1994). What the incident demonstrated was that consumers were growing more responsive to issues of food safety and were willing to pay higher prices for food to avoid risks. Where conventional products symbolized risk, organic products began to symbolize safety.
Although the market was growing, there existed no standards governing how organic products had to be grown in order to be labeled organic. Product integrity was based largely on the trust inherent in the consumer–farmer relationship. This worked well when a consumer had access to a farm directly. However, when buying a product from a store, there was no assurance that the food product was, in fact, organic. As consumer interest grew, so did the demand for a way of verifying that a product had indeed been grown in accordance with organic principles.
3.4 GroWTh of aN iNTerNaTioNal iNdusTry
Increased awareness of the benefits of organic farming to human and environmen-tal health coupled with a deeper understanding of the detrimenenvironmen-tal environmenenvironmen-tal impacts of conventional farming practices resulted in increased demand for organic food worldwide. As demand was growing in other parts of the world and interna-tional trade of organic products was increasing, questions were being raised about the products’ integrity.
In 1972, in an effort to both establish an organic standard and provide consumer assurance, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) was formed. In the beginning, IFOAM consisted of members in numerous European countries and India and Canada. Norms were developed that provided a baseline standard under which a product must be produced if it was to carry the “organic”
label. The IFOAM norms served as a means of ensuring that internationally traded organic products were produced under a similar standard.
Based in Germany, IFOAM worked closely with the Soil Association in the United Kingdom, which, at this point, was the premiere organic certifier in Europe and provided certification services internationally upon request. Lady Eve Balfour was on the founding board of the organization; therefore, it was a natural step for both organizations to work together. IFOAM sought to develop standards to which organic products should be grown; the Soil Association continued to lead the world in research on the benefits of organic agriculture to soil and human health.
As IFOAM and the Soil Association were providing guidance worldwide, several U.S.-based certification agencies were established, many of which continue to oper-ate: California Certified Organic Farmers (1973), Oregon Tilth Certified Organic (1974), and Farm Verified Organic based in North Dakota (1979). Although similar, the organic standards developed by these organizations lacked uniformity. Thus, consumers could not be sure if “organic” on a label meant the same thing from state to state or from product to product.
These organizations, largely by happenstance, pioneered two critical steps in continuing to grow the industry. First, they introduced the need for standardiza-tion. In so doing, they provided the industry with a prescriptive road to access the emerging market. Second, they required third-party verification. This step provided consumers with assurance that the products that carried the “organic” label were, in fact, verified to comply with the standards. The circle was complete—industry had a clear path to follow and consumers had assurance that products were legitimately carrying the “organic” label. These features are what set organic apart from other
“green” agricultural industries (natural, grass-fed, etc.) and are largely responsible for its success.
Because demand for organic food was continuing to grow and organic products were being traded throughout the country, consumers and farmers began to request the development of a national standard to which all products labeled “organic” must adhere. A national standard would provide the industry with consistency and protect it from fraudulent claims.
3.5 adoPTioN of NaTioNal sTaNdards
The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) was Title 21 of the 1990 Federal Farm Bill (Gold, 2007) and was the country’s response to the growing need for consistency in standardization. As described by the act, its primary purposes were:
to establish national standards governing the marketing of certain
agricul-•
tural products as organically produced,
to assure consumers that organically produced products meet consistent
•
standards, and
to facilitate interstate commerce in fresh and processed organic foods.
•
Individual states had the capacity to establish more restrictive standards than those in the act. A state could not, however, prohibit the sale of products that had been grown according to the OFPA but not under its own stricter standard from entering the market in that state. Additionally, the OFPA made mandatory the cre-ation of a ncre-ational organic program by the Agricultural Marketing Services section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
In addition to providing the first nationwide standard for organic food production, the OFPA offered the United States the first legal definition of the term. Organic to some farmers and consumers might still imply a desire to return to a simpler life, to nourish the environment, to protest chemical-intensive agricultural production methods, but legally organic would be a labeling term for agricultural commodities produced in accordance with the act.
More than 10 years passed between the establishment of the Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and the development and implementation of the USDA’s National Organic Program. The final rule went into effect on April 21, 2001, and allowed for an 18-month transition period for the industry to bring itself into com-pliance. On October 21, 2002, all products sold in the United States carrying an
“organic” label had to be fully compliant with the national rule.
The National Organic Program (NOP) requires that all certification agencies obtain accreditation through the USDA. Accreditation verifies that the certifier has the capacity to inspect and enforce the national rule. All organic food products sold in the United States must be certified by an NOP-accredited certification agency, whether the food was produced on U.S. soil or abroad.
Under the USDA-NOP, producers of organic food may not use genetically modi-fied organisms, must enhance or maintain the quality of the natural resources of their farming operations, must record all material applications, must maintain an organic production system plan that outlines the practices being employed on the farm, and may not use synthetic chemicals on the organic crops.
3.6 GroWTh aNd ChaNGe iN orGaNiC aGriCulTure siNCe 1992
Driven by increasing demand, production of organic food has become one of the fastest-growing international industries. In the United States, the area of organic cropland quadrupled from 1992 through 2005, going from 935,450 to 4,054,429 acres (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2006).
Growth in cropland was matched by increasing growth in consumer interest.
Through the 1990s, consumer demand increased by about 20% a year. The con-nection between the increase in demand and the increase in production is obvious.
As demand grew, farmers responded and production followed. Accordingly, organic farming has become a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States.
Historically, organic food products were sold primarily in health and natural food stores. In 1991, these stores accounted for approximately 68% of sales, while conven-tional retail outlets sold only 7% of organic food products. By 2000, figures began to tell a different story, with conventional grocery stores selling 49% of organic prod-ucts, and health and natural food stores selling 48% (Dimitri and Greene, 2001).
Sales of organic food products in the United States exceeded $9 billion in 2001, and the USDA predicted continued growth as a result of the harmonization of organic standards. In 2000, for the first time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS), more organic food was pur-chased in supermarket chains than in health food stores and other venues. It was esti-mated that at the time, 73% of all conventional grocery food stores offered organic food products (Dimitri and Greene, 2001).
Growth in the international market for organic food products has also begun to see stupendous growth. The 27 members of the European Union, Japan, and Korea are among the nations with their own organic standards. More than 100 countries are now producing organic food on more than 59 million acres of land. The international market for organic food products in 2003 was estimated at $23 billion.
Multinational corporations such as Heinz, General Mills, and Pepsi have seen the investment value in expanding their portfolios to include organic options. As more countries and governing bodies continue to adopt organic standards, the easier it will be both for farmers to have access to this fast-growing market and for the organic food industry to feel the pressures of a globalized food system.
In the United States, therefore, organic agriculture has clearly established itself as an integral, growing part of the American food system, even though the amount of farmland certified as organic remains small—about 0.5% overall. In vegetable production, 4.7% of the land is organic, and 2.5% of land in fruit is organic. For most grains, the amount of certified organic land remains at less than 1%. At 5.8%, carrot production has the largest proportion of land certified organic (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2006).
Even though organic remains a small component of the overall American food sys-tem, the growth and changes in organic production have ignited alarm bells among some proponents of organic agriculture. Buck et al. (1997) started to analyze the effects of increased commercial interest in organic agriculture before the National Organic Program set national standards. Based on interviews with approximately 70 organic vegetable growers in Northern California in 1995, they foresaw that organic agriculture would likely incur a process of penetration by capital, meaning that wage labor (rather than owner-operator labor) would eventually prevail at the site of pro-duction. Publication of the article in 1997 set off a debate among social scientists about whether organic agriculture would “conventionalize” or become more like conventional agriculture.
Halberg et al. (2006) concurred and saw that the conventionalization of the organic sector leads to a “lack of transparency and trust among producers and con-sumers, increasing food miles and dilution of the ‘nearness’ principle, specialization and concentration of production at the cost of smallholders and reduction in diversity in crops and farm types” (p. 8).
The conventionalization debate took on overtones of the sharply polarized argu-ments among natural scientists that occurred during what Heckman (2006) called the polarization phase (1940–1978) of the development of organic agriculture. Recall that during that earlier period, Sir Albert Howard characterized scientific disputes about soil science as a war in the soil. Just as Howard believed that conventional agri-culture would lead to ruination of the soil and ultimately human health, those who lamented conventionalization believed that the penetration of capital into organic agriculture would betray and ruin the ability of organic agriculture to point the way toward an economically feasible, environmentally sustainable, and socially just food system (Guthman, 2000, 2004a, 2004b).
Other scholars who participated in the conventionalization debate shared the concerns about betrayal, but they did not necessarily agree that organic agriculture really would succumb to capital penetration, or that if it did, capital would subvert the ideology of progressive reform that underlay much of organic agriculture’s history (Darnhofer, 2005; Lockie and Halpin, 2005; Obach, 2007; Best, 2008; Constance, 2008; Guptil and Welsh, 2008).
It remains too early to see the ultimate effects of national standards for organic produce, but Heckman (2006) and others have clearly indicated that already those committed to the ideology of progressive reform through organic agriculture are seeking new concepts to ensure that the social agenda remains strong. For example, Allen (2004) sees linking sustainability in agriculture with community food security as a productive agenda.
Lyson (2004) sees local production or “civic agriculture” as important to keeping reform vital. Morgan et al. (2006) amplify the importance of place for small-scale growers by analyzing how they can achieve quality, high-value production in spe-cially defined areas.
Jaffee (2007) argues that “fair trade” has helped small, organic growers, par-ticularly in coffee and bananas. Raynolds et al. (2007) see commercial success in fair trade commerce but also, as with organic agriculture’s commercial successes, a growing tension between those motivated by social justice concerns and those seek-ing to enhance the market successes of fair trade. Just as in organic agriculture, these tensions arise from mainstreaming into major retail outlets, an increase in scale, and arguments about the governance of fair trade standards and which organization should set the standards.
3.7 CoNClusioNs
What was once a market niche has firmly rooted itself in the mainstream, piquing the interest of farmers wanting to collect price premiums for their food, consumers seek-ing what they believe to be a healthier food product, and corporations wantseek-ing to capi-talize on the increased demand for organic products. As demand continues to grow, all involved will be asked to evaluate their perceptions of the industry and its future.
Organic began as a socioenvironmental movement aimed at protecting human and environmental health. Today, organic is seen as a lucrative international industry that provides many farmers with hope for survival. This growth has resulted in a building tension between those who want organic to continue to exist primarily with the small farmer and those who are apparently concerned with capitalizing on the price premium organic products offer.
No reason exists to think that the geographic, biological, social, and economic forces that were so powerful in shaping agriculture in the past might not also have impacts on organic production. If organic production continues to grow and take an increasing share of the agricultural market, how will organic farmers distribute themselves across the landscape? Will “belts” emerge in which organic growers in particular areas specialize in a small range of crops, for which the area has low pro-duction costs?
More poignantly, will the agricultural “production treadmill” begin to operate among organic producers? Will the supply of organic produce begin to exceed the effective market demand, leading to intense competition among organic growers and a search for cost-cutting new technology? Will we see some organic growers driven from the field by competition from their more technically progressive peers, as the treadmill thesis argues? Will the conventionalization thesis lead the indus-trial organic sector to mimic the conventional food system? Although chemicals and farm practices are different, the issues of market choices and scale are not addressed when organic farms become industrial-scale food production systems with audi-ences worldwide.
Organic had previously provided small farms with an access point to the whole-sale food market. As larger farming operations and corporations have moved into organic production, this access has been put in jeopardy. Farmers’ markets and
community-supported agriculture (CSA) are more and more becoming the small organic farmer’s only hope for survival. Even these markets could be jeopardized as mainstream grocery outlets continue to expand their organic selections. This shift has set off alarm bells for those who believe that the social and cultural elements found in the early days of the organic food movement are as critical as the farming methods themselves.
Why should food, of all things, be the linchpin of [the rebellion against a globalized food system]? Perhaps because food is a powerful metaphor for a great many of the val-ues to which people feel globalization poses a threat, including the distinctiveness of local cultures and identities, the survival of local landscapes, and biodiversity. (Pollan, 2006, p. 162)
Organic food production, at its inception, was focused on improving soil and, later, on enhancing human health. Agriculturists, activists, and consumers now have to decide whether or not culture and justice are equally as important to organic agri-culture as the environmental and health considerations. From the standpoint of soil vitality and the ability of large numbers of people to have access to organic food, one could argue that it is imperative that corporate farms engage, as they have direct con-trol over more acreage than their smaller counterparts. From the standpoint of social and cultural justice, however, one could argue that by allowing industrial farms to participate in the market, we will only see the perpetuation of the already rapid loss of family farms and exploitation of agricultural labor and rural culture.
These are the issues that promoters, enablers, and participants in organic produc-tion are grappling with now. That more American agriculture will become organic seems a foregone conclusion. How that production will ultimately shape the organic industry we know much less clearly. There is no reason to think, however, that organic producers will be immune from the pressures that have shaped American agriculture in the past.
The resolution of these pressures will determine whether organic agriculture remains an acceptable proxy for sustainable agriculture or diverges in too many ways from the sustainable path. As detailed in the preceding chapters, conversion from conventional to organic production points in a sustainable direction only if the resulting systems satisfy an array of environmental, economic, and social justice cri-teria. It is doubtful that agroecosystems that meet the legal requirements for organic labeling but produce at a massive scale, put small farmers out of business, rely on
The resolution of these pressures will determine whether organic agriculture remains an acceptable proxy for sustainable agriculture or diverges in too many ways from the sustainable path. As detailed in the preceding chapters, conversion from conventional to organic production points in a sustainable direction only if the resulting systems satisfy an array of environmental, economic, and social justice cri-teria. It is doubtful that agroecosystems that meet the legal requirements for organic labeling but produce at a massive scale, put small farmers out of business, rely on