Backbone > Life in the Balance
Is Organic Growing Becoming Onerous?
By Susan Piperato; Photo by Megan McQuade

Starting last month, the US Department of Agriculture implemented new certification requirements for the growing of organic foods, in an attempt to nationalize standards and define precisely what “organic” means. As a result, as of October 21, with the exception of farms with revenues below $5,000 per year, only farms certified under the USDA’s program can legally call their produce organic.

The USDA’s move toward a national standard came about for ostensibly good reasons. As the market for organic foods has grown over the past 20 years, some farmers have brought in conventional produce (grown using pesticides and herbicides) and sold it as organic—prompting justifiable anger among consumers as well as honest organic farmers. These well-publicized cases in turn led some states, including California, to pass laws defining what constitutes organic processes and produce—and eventually prompted the federal government to move toward ensuring that when we, as consumers, pay extra for organic produce, that we’re not actually putting genetically-modified, pesticide-, herbicide-, antibiotic-, hormone-laden foods on our tables. In 1990, the Organic Foods Production Act codified this regulatory approach, but still didn’t define what makes food organic, or what constitutes the organic process. Therefore, both private and state organic certification groups throughout the country were free to come up with their own definitions, which varied widely. Following repeated requests by consumer groups and farmers themselves for a national standard definition, the USDA at last decided to draw one up. The new standard not only defines what constitutes organic produce, but allows American organic agribusinesses to enter the worldwide organic food market, and to meet an international organic standard along with chief competitors Japan and Europe.

NEW USDA rules define organic according to four levels:

1. “100% Organic”: all ingredients meet or exceed USDA specifications, which ban the use of synthetic pesticides, herb-icides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, as well as using genetically modified seeds. No artificial preservatives or other additives are allowed, except salt and water.

2. “Organic”: at least 95 percent of the ingredients meet or exceed USDAspecifications.

3. “Made with Organic Ingredients”: at least 70 percent of the ingredients meet or exceed USDA specifications.

4. If a foodstuff is less than 70 percent organic, but contains a single organic ingredient, the word “organic” can still be used on the label, but only in small type in the ingredient panel.

So the USDA’s new regulations should make things clearer for everyone, safer for consumers, and keep it business-as-usual for organic farmers with nothing to hide, right? Theoretically, yes. But according to several local organic farmers these changes may very well only make an already difficult job even harder. What’s at stake are the very things that built the organic market’s success over the years, despite the proportionately higher prices of organic produce: the close relationship between the small organic farmer and his or her community, the Jeffersonian vision of the family farm, sustainable farmlands, and the ready availability of the produce itself.

What is beneficial about the new regulations is that they ensure that processed organic foods (ketchup, for instance) are clearly labeled. Now, if you buy canned organic soup, you’ll know whether every ingredient is organic, or only the carrots. But when it comes to actually growing those carrots, local farmers are at best skeptical and at worst fearful of the new regulations’ effects.

There are several reasons why the USDA’s organic regulations are so threatening. The vast amounts of daily paperwork involved in becoming USDA certified (providing a “paper trail from seed to selling,” as several local farmers called it) is probably the biggest obstacle, and the USDA’s new fines (up to $10,000 per day for an uncertified farmer continuing to call his or her produce organic) seem to have been set for agribusiness without taking the family farm budget into account. And last but not least, some local farmers also complain, the very regulations implemented to stop organic farmers from “cheating” may, ironically, provide loopholes for unethical farmers to do just that.

“All that paperwork doesn’t have anything to do with whether someone cheats,” said Ron Khosla, co-owner with his wife Kate of Huguenot Street Farm in New Paltz. “It’s not going to stop anything. Nobody knows what I do at 5am on a Sunday. I could be out there spraying pesticides and just not write it down. It’s all bullshit.”

For Lynn Byczynski, editor of Growing for Market, a national monthly newsletter for direct-to-market farmers, the USDA’s regulations are a double-edged sword, but ultimately, she’s optimistic, perhaps even a bit idealistic, in view of what the local farmers have to say about the regulations’ consequences.

“The organic rules are a terrific benefit for consumers because they ensure for the first time that the word ‘organic’ has some validity. I am thrilled to see agribusiness adopting organic standards, whatever their reasons for doing so, because organic is unquestionably better for the health of the planet and everyone who lives on it,” she said. “However, the structure of the new rules does make it hard on the small, diversified farmer. Unlike big farms that might grow, say, a thousand acres of organic carrots, most farmers growing for local markets are producing scores of different crops every year. The record-keeping on that kind of diversity is onerous. But besides that, the word ‘organic’ in the past has encompassed much more than just a set of growing standards, the products and procedures that you can or cannot use in crop production. Throughout its history, ‘organic’ has also implied freshness, seasonality, relationships between farmers and consumers, land stewardship and sustaining local farms. The farmers who molded this model of agriculture may no longer be using the word organic, now that the federal government owns it. But that doesn’t change a thing on our farms. Small-scale farmers, serving local markets, are still growing wholesome, safe food. They really are beyond organic.”

But while Byczynski remains hopeful about the future of organic farming, most organic farmers throughout the Hudson Valley are not only skeptical about undergoing USDA organic certification, but are concerned about their livelihoods. According to Khosla, of the 40 community organic vegetable farms located throughout the Hudson Valley in Ulster, Orange, Westchester, and Dutchess Counties, only seven are planning to be USDA certified organic. “That’s less than eighty percent of the farmers in this community who are committed to it; the rest don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said. “It’s very confusing—I mean, it’s not like we don’t have markets established over the years. I know one guy whose organic farm has been going since 1972, and suddenly he can’t call himself organic.” Like other farmers, Khosla also objects strongly to what he sees as draconian punishments for continuing to use the word organic. “If you call yourself organic, and you don’t stop, the regulations say you’ll be charged up to $10,000 per violation (NOP Final Rule 205:100),” he said, “but the people in the USDA office in New York said that could be per day while you’re calling yourself that.”

At his own farm, Khosla has filled 12 plots with more than 200 types of vegetables on his land edging on the Wallkill River for the past four years, and has established one of the most popular CSAs (community-supported agriculture cooperatives) in the area. “You have to record where you got your seeds and everything that happens to every one of your seedlings every day [if you go USDA certified],” he says. “I was talking to a guy from California Certified Organic Farmers, and he said, ‘Oh, you think it’s so hard, and it is really hard the first year, but once you get into it, you get used to it; it’s really easy.’ I said, ‘That’s because you have 900 acres of rice—that’s why it’s easy to track it.’”

In Milton, as of the October 21 deadline, organic farmer Amy Hepworth temporarily lost her largest accounts—growing vegetables for 600 to 800 families each for Green Dragon Food Cooperative in New Jersey and Park Slope Organic Food Cooperative in Brooklyn—until she becomes USDA certified organic. “They won’t sell it if it’s not certified, so I have no choice,” she said. “I’m going to do it, but I hear there’s about 150 hours per year of paperwork involved, so I can’t get to it until
the winter.” Speaking over the phone during an intense rainstorm in mid-October, just after the first frost, Hepworth sounded resigned to the new regulations, but not entirely optimistic. “We survived the frost, so I’ve got broccoli and cabbage and squash that I’ve got to harvest and somehow sell locally, because Park Slope won’t take them, and I haven’t got time to do the paperwork now. I have to harvest what I can right now of my crops, and sell it, and protect the rest until I can harvest that. The paperwork will have to wait until January.” And what if she finds the USDA certification process too arduous? “I don’t know,” Hepworth said. “We also sell some cut flowers now, and I have thought of changing over completely to that business if this certification doesn’t work out. But that’s not what we really want—we’re farmers and we supply food for families.”

Like Hepworth, Pete Taliaferro of Taliaferro Farms in New Paltz, who has been certified organic by the Natural Food Association, is also concerned about continuing to make it as an organic farmer unless he is USDA certified. “Amy sells tens of thousands of vegetables to Park Slope, and sometimes I send stuff down to her to go to Park Slope, so that’s out now,” he said. Taliaferro is leaning toward undergoing the USDA certification process, but only just. Speaking on the phone while he ate his dinner—at 10pm—having finally come in from the fields, Taliaferro confessed to feeling “a little on the bitter side—I’ve just come through a really rough year” regarding confronting the actual process of becoming USDA certified. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m not the best at paperwork, and I’m chief cook and bottle-washer around here. In the past five years, we’ve grown in leaps and bounds, but I work 16 and a half hours a day, six days a week, and the last thing I want to do right now is paperwork, even though I know it needs to be done.”

A successful CSA owner, Taliaferro was already planning to “streamline into bulk wholesale” when the USDA’s new regulations came through. He not only calls the regulations “absurd”, but fears that in the end they could even eradicate small farmers—or just turn out to be a big joke and provide ample opportunity to cheat.

“As far as the regulations go, I see three things,” he said. “First, for a legitimate small farm—that is, close to twenty acres of produce and twenty-five acres of pasture land—for a farmer trying to make a living from that and not living on his grandfather’s trust fund or the kind of grants a lot of farmers get when they decide, ‘Let’s be natural,’ the regulations are going to separate the real farmers from those people. It’ll cost me a hundred times more money per year to be certified organic by the government. It costs me $15 now, and it’s going to be $1,500. Now that’s a significant expenditure for me. That’s not a big deal in the situation where you’re dealing with someone else’s money.

“Number two is, the regulations will only work according to how closely you pay attention to the rules. And the rules of the road are that not everybody pays complete attention to the rules. There is room for flexibility, and I’m not talking about issues of morality or ethics, like bringing in non-organic food and calling it organic. But you have to wheel and deal a little to get by. For instance, you can’t use any used cartons if you go USDA certified. Well, we use a lot of them. We buy some new, and some used. They’re all pretty much the same. It’s twenty to fifty cents apiece for a used bushel carton, and ninety-six cents to $1.26 for new. So, if I’m spending $3,000 a year on used cartons, that’s going to go way up. Can I get away with using used cartons and putting in a liner? I think I can. I hope so. Third, according to the new standards, you can’t have organic and non-organic produce on the same truck. Well, it would be economically impossible for us to own two trucks. Some of my produce goes places where they don’t care if they’re organic, they just want fresh, locally grown produce. So I might buy in from a local farmer, say seventy crates of cabbage and fifty crates of beets. Then I might put in the truck with them thirty crates of my own organic celery and twenty crates of my own organic bok choy. I can’t do that anymore. I think it’s absurd—it’s like nonsmokers and smokers in the same little 700-square-foot restaurant. I mean, are they telling me that when the produce gets to the store, that the guy putting it on the shelves is going to wear gloves? And that the organic stuff is going to be far away from the non-organic? Get real!”

But Taliaferro is in no mind to bend the rules, either. “I have to work out something about the truck situation,” he says. “I’m an ethical person. But I’m going to lose money because of stuff like this, and I can hardly pay my bills as it is. And there are other people I know who aren’t ethical, who would take advantage of these gray areas.”

Nathaniel Thompson of Stillpoint Farm in Northern Dutchess County agreed. “It’s clear to me that the national law isn’t going to change anything at all,” he said. “It just provides more hoops to jump through. Most people will say the hell with it and just do what they normally do, and wait and see if there’s a crackdown.” Thompson said he switched from organic to biodynamic growing “years ago, when I saw this coming.” He is certified by the Demeter Association for Biodynamic Farming, which includes USDA certification. According to Thompson, the difference between organic and biodynamic growing is that “organic really means food grown without poison, while biodynamic farming is a holistic system that emphasizes not using farm inputs as much as possible, and using herbal preparations, like homeopathic remedies on the soil. In a way, it’s a simpler, cleaner system.”

But the big problem for Thompson, as for several other farmers interviewed, is documenting the organic seed. Although he concedes that the USDA requires record-keeping that “farmers should be keeping anyhow, which is information that’s tremendously helpful to the farmer,” he acknowledges that doing so is an arduous task. “I grow 250 varieties, and to document seeds and keep a schedule of what happens with every single one—it’s a big deal. Now in addition to the Demeter paperwork, I have to do the USDA stuff. It’s a joke; they can make it all as standard as they can, but it doesn’t do much for me. It just benefits family farmers selling to a national market and farmers selling overseas—the heavy-hitters who started to look at organics and decided to get into it because it’s a lucrative market.”

The Khoslas have opted not to become USDA certified organic. Instead, Ron has founded an alternative program, Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) (www.naturallygrown.org) that is already garnering much support—including farmers from Virginia, Connecticut, Alaska, and Texas, Cornell University, and the Hudson Valley chapter of the Sierra Club. And he’s also beginning to get publicity. Khosla was interviewed recently by Michael Olson, host of the radio program “The Food Chain,” featured on Saturday mornings on KSCO and KOMY in California. (To listen to the interview online, go to www.metrofarm.com.)

The biggest differences between CNG’s and the USDA’s regulations, according to Khosla, are that CNG tests for pesticide residues in plant tissue and soil—which is not part of the national organic standards program—and that CNG actually performs its own inspections, while the USDA hires outside contractors to perform inspections—creating a greater opportunity for rule-bending evidence to fall by the wayside. “We use the same rules, but we administer them in a much more credible fashion,” Khosla said. “So a farmer certified by us can say, ‘Okay, so I didn’t spend 160 hours on paperwork, but I’ve been tested.’ Right now, our plan is that ten percent of the farms are randomly sampled. That might increase to twenty percent, but I think that seems enough of a deterrent; because cheating is too easy with the USDA—it’s all based on a farmer’s word.”

Having begun a continuing dialogue about the federal standard’s implications with the USDA office in New York, Khosla said he does not believe that “anybody expected small farmers to reject the federal program as much as they are.” He explained: “Most organic farmers in the United States are small vegetable family farmers. On a nationwide level, we’re losing thousands of them. CNG is only for the farmers that make up your immediate landscape. It isn’t for farmers who grow a thousand acres of soy and sell it to General Mills.” For Khosla, the certification is as much about environmentalism as it is about organics—which he hopes will bring CNG farmers full circle back to the reasons they began growing organically in the first place: “To be good stewards of the land, you need to be growing a diversity of crops,” he said. “You don’t grow 10,000 lettuces and 1,000 carrots every year in the same place. Any farmer knows that’s the worst thing for the soil.”