By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Thirty years ago, the public’s perception of organic farming is that it was just for hippies; just a few years ago, that had shifted to it being the domain of yuppies, according to Mark Keating.
But with a growing awareness of environmental conservation, the University of Kentucky professor said the public is coming around to more consumption of and respect for organic food. Even the USDA is taking it more seriously, as shown by better incentives in the 2008 farm bill, and there’s a grassroots movement for President Obama to hire a “White House farmer” in Washington.
Purdue University Extension Director Chuck Hibberd, who used to teach in western Nebraska, said years ago that region was a locale of high public interest in organics and “natural foods.” In fact, the area had the first USDA-certified organic cropland in the nation.
“When Walmart put in an organic section in the grocery store, people started to pay attention,” he added.
Keating agreed. “We don’t think of Walmart as the place where hippies or yuppies are known to congregate,” he wryly told farmers attending the fifth Midwest Organic Production & Marketing Conference & Trade Show in Indianapolis last week. The conference was co-hosted by Purdue and the University of Illinois.
Keating who teaches organics and horticulture, also worked for nearly five years at the USDA back when it first instituted rules for organic certification. He explained the principles behind organic farming are to cut costs, conserve resources and not overly disturb the environment over the long-term, while producing wholesome, natural food.
“Farmers are our foremost conservationists in this society,” he said. “They’re well aware of the consequences of their actions, and they strive to do what is best.”
Organics as an industry is growing slowly, Keating explained, but those who start buying organic tend to stay with it. The same is true for U.S. organic farmers – he said in a country of 300 million people, 10,000 isn’t many, but the business has a high retention rate.
“When people make that leap (into organics), it changes their life,” he said. “The satisfaction level is very high.”
The biggest concern about organic farming is it’s not sufficiently productive to feed a growing population, but Keating said he believes those systems can be just as productive as non-organic practices, with proper investment and research into efficiency. He called the new farm bill a “sea change” for organics, since it has some provisions that show strong support.
One such change is under Title VII, Research. The 2002 farm bill contained the Organic Research and Extension Initiative, which Keating said allocated $15 million over its life for large multi-year, multidisciplinary research proposals, up to $1 million each, mostly to land grant universities and collaborators.
Keating said the 2008 bill allocates $78 million over five years – each year’s share is more than the entire amount approved for 2002-08.
Within that are categories of priority research, such as finding new and improved seed varieties suited to organic agriculture – what he called “ground zero” of improving crop productivity.
Title II, Conservation, includes the Conservation Stewardship (CSP), Conservation Reserve (CRP) and Environmental Quality Incentives (EQIP) programs. Keating described these as support to farmers for how they grow rather than for how much or specific crops. For example, EQIP encourages good practices on working farmland, rather than subsidizing retired land.
He said this is important because of increasing public resistance to federal subsidies for ag and these show the government is trying to aid environmentally friendly practices.
“In a nutshell, the CSP … is the best vehicle for turning that ship of state around at USDA,” he said, adding organic certification is linked to CSP.
There is upwards of $12 billion available to spend over five years toward these practices, Keating explained.
He called these competitive grants “significant recognition” of the benefits of organic practices and said it should help more people transition into adopting them. Title X, Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, includes the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program, which is designed to reimburse a big chunk of the cost of seeking USDA organic certification to those producers. Keating said the ceiling was raised from $500 to $750 in 2008 and there is $22 million available over five years.
He admitted this has met with varying levels of success from state to state, since they cannot reimburse until they receive the federal funds. One producer in his audience also said some of the Title II money doesn’t always reach farmers in smaller counties – Keating explained USDA officials at the county level do have some impact on how well their counties are served by these grants and cost-share funds.
Under Title X, Keating said the USDA will also gather national organic production and marketing data for use by producers.
There are other portions of the new farm bill designed to help organic farmers, such as Title XII, Crop Insurance. For more details, visit www.usda.gov and www.ams.usda.gov/nop |
