Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5
You can make a small fortune in farming, provided you start with a large one
.
—Anonymous
In the early 1970s, when I was in college, I lived in a commune, where we grew organic vegetables and
cooked huge, stupendous meals for ourselves and large numbers of visitors. It wasn't the sort of thing you
might see on TV or in the movies—we were a wholesome lot: enthusiastic, idealistic, earnest, and, of course,
naive. But more than anything, we were optimistic about the future. And a big part of that positive outlook
had to do with the future of organic agriculture and the potential for living in harmony with nature and cre-
ating an alternative economy. But little did we know at the time that organic food would stray far from its
principled origins to become a highly consolidated, globally traded business—with all the pitfalls associated
with highly industrialized food products.
We never could have envisioned the trajectory of organic food from a small homegrown affair to an in-
dustry with almost $30 billion of sales in 2011 that is dominated by the largest food companies in the coun-
try. Our aspiration for organic food was part of a broader vision for a society that is socially and econom-
ically just and ecologically sound. Organic food embodied integrity: more than eschewing the use of agri-
chemicals, it signified a set of principles by which to live.
The roots of this movement can be traced back to the founding of Rodale Press in 1930 by J.I. Rodale,
a visionary who promoted organic food and healthy living. He started publishing
Organic Farming and
Gardening
magazine in 1942—a magazine still published today as
Organic Farming
. In 1962, Rachel Car-
son's
Silent Spring
changed the consciousness of the growing youth movement about the toxicity of agri-
cultural chemicals. By the mid-1960s and early 1970s, the counterculture had spurred the growth of natural
food stores and food co-ops.
Rodale Press established voluntary organic guidelines in 1972, and organic growers associations were
formed in some states, each with its own set of guidelines. In 1989, a scandal over Alar, a dangerous chemic-
al used on apples, helped stimulate a broader market for organics. As the demand for organic food skyrock-
eted, organic producers saw the need for replacing the patchwork of standards with a uniform federal one. A
broad coalition successfully lobbied for passage of the Organic Foods Production Act, which was adopted
as part of the 1990 Farm Bill.
Authority for the new National Organic Program was given to the USDA, an agency historically opposed
to organic agriculture. It took the agency two years to establish the mandated National Organic Standards
Board (NOSB), an advisory committee appointed by the secretary of agriculture to develop standards that
are given final approval by the USDA.
In 1997, under the Clinton administration, the USDA unveiled a set of standards developed at the behest
of the food industry, rather than using the ones painstakingly negotiated by the NOSB through a series of
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