Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Organic agriculture was seen as a hopeful trend with positive consequences:
better for the environment, farmers, farmworkers, and consumers. It limits synthetic
chemical usage and environmental contamination; it supports prosperous communi-
ties through smaller-scale operations, price premiums, and direct markets. Organics
was seen as a transformative alternative to the negative impacts of the industrial
food system; it would improve our quality of life in numerous ways (see Lampkin
1990
; Clunies-Ross and Cox
1994
; Goodman
1999
,
2000
; Allen and Kovach
2000
;
DeLind
2000
;Vos
2000
; Michelsen
2001
; Pollan
2001
; Lyson and Guptill
2004
).
9.2
Background
In the 1980s, research began to document the feasibility of organic production as an
alternative to chemical-based agriculture (National Research Council
1980
; United
States Department of Agriculture
1980
; United States Government Accounting
Office
1990
). The USDA LISA/SARE programs were grounded in organic philoso-
phy, but employed the term sustainable agriculture to be more politically palatable
(Allen
2004
; Constance
2010
). After a long battle and resulting compromise, in
2002 the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) created the certified organic label
(Guthman
2004a
). Supporters of conventional agriculture systematically opposed
official government support for organics (Guthman
1998
; Madden
1998
). Their
attempt to insert GMOs into the “official definition” was a failed attempt to coopt the
label, and it galvanized the organic movement in opposition. While the NOP Final
Rule provided regulatory underpinning for organics, the resulting certified organic
label was a market label with no claims to superiority to conventional systems (Lohr
and Salomonsson
2000
; Greene et al.
2009
).
The US organic market grew at double-digit rates through the 1990s and
2000s, increasing from $3.6B to $31.5B in sales from 1997 to 2011 (Dimitri and
Oberholtzer
2009
; Organic Trade Association
2012
). Globally, the market reached
$39B in 2008, increasing at a rate of about $5B per year (Willer and Kilcher
2009
). Some estimates report $59B in global sales for 2010 (Willer and Kilcher
2012
). The growth attracted the entry of conventional farmers and mainstream retail
grocery chains (Guthman
2004a
; Greene et al.
2009
;Howard
2009b
). As of 2010,
mass-market grocery stores such as WalMart and Kroger accounted for 54 % of
organic food sales, followed by natural retailers at 39 % (Heller
2007
; Organic
Trade Association
2011
). In 2011 the wholesale market accounted for 81 % of
organic sales, followed by 13 % in the direct-to-retail market and 6 % for the direct-
to-consumer market (National Agricultural Statistics Service
2012
). The organic
distribution system was transformed from one characterized largely by direct sales
combined with natural foods retailers such as Whole Foods to one fully incorporated
into the conventional system, including mass retailers with their own private-label
brands
1
and the rapid growth of middlemen “handlers” that coordinate the organic
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