DENVER — Advocates for organic food and farming are, increasingly, victims of their own success. Over the past 25 years, this grassroots movement has morphed into a $43 billion industry, turning the biannual National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meetings into a struggle between representatives of organic farmers and consumers and powerful agribusiness lobbyists. The spring meeting in Denver starts on April 19 and could decide who influences the regulations that determine the working definition of the USDA’s organic seal.
On the meeting’s docket is the highly controversial question of whether to legalize hydroponic production of organic fruits and vegetables, which are generally grown in industrial-scale greenhouses with liquid fertilizer instead of nutrient-rich soil. Also up for debate will be allowing “biodegradable” plastic mulch, without scientific evidence to assure organic consumers that toxic and synthetic residues left in the soil will not end up in organic crops or negatively impact the environment.
The NOSB was created by Congress as a 15-member independent advisory panel with statutory authority to help create the regulations that govern organic food and farming. Public interest advocates have long accused the Bush and Obama administrations of stacking the panel with members and supporters of the powerful industry lobby group, the Organic Trade Association (OTA). The young Trump administration has yet to leave their mark on the organic regulatory environment.
“We thought the situation was bad during the Bush era, but the Obama administration truly perfected creating the illusion of a broad-based, public-private partnership that Congress had envisioned for organic rulemaking,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, widely recognized as one of the industry’s most aggressive watchdogs.
“What started out with great hope as a collaborative process with the passage of the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990 has matured into an adversarial process pitting true believers in the foundational values of organics against raw corporate power,” Kastel added.
In conjunction with the spring meeting, The Cornucopia Institute released an updated scorecard of the voting records of all NOSB members, which shows a wide disparity between independent voices on the panel and those with the OTA.
No recent issue has represented the divide in organics more aptly than whether or not hydroponic growing, in greenhouses or containers, should be legalized. Even though organic regulations clearly require organic farmers to carefully manage and improve soil fertility, major USDA accredited organic certification agencies have quietly certified over 100 giant hydroponic facilities in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Europe as organic.
“Almost exclusively, the laws in countries exporting to the U.S. do not approve organic labeling of hydroponics for their own markets,” said Linley Dixon, PhD, Cornucopia’s Senior Scientist and Policy Director. “In terms of the international organic industry, the U.S. is truly an outlier on this hydroponics issue.”
The Cornucopia Institute and other organic and sustainable farm policy groups do not necessarily object to hydroponic growing in general, but they are strongly opposed to labeling soil-less production as “organic.” They point to the potential legal violation of the law, as well as alleging it is an inherently deceptive practice depriving consumers looking for more flavorful and nutritious food, believing rich organic soil is a fundamental production requirement.
“Few beyond the hydro producers, their lobbyists, and their certifiers believe these products should actually be certified organic,” said Dave Chapman, a pioneering soil-based greenhouse grower from East Thetford, Vermont. “There is no consumer outcry calling for hydroponics. But as people find out what is being sold to them as organic, there will be an outcry of anger from many organic supporters.”
To substantiate Chapman’s claim, Cornucopia conducted an analysis of the more than 2,000 formal public comments from organic stakeholders that were submitted to the NOSB prior to the spring meeting. Almost half of the comments pertain to hydroponics. Of these, approximately three-quarters do not want hydroponic growing to be labeled organic. Comments in favor of organic hydroponics were almost exclusively from individuals with a direct economic stake in hydroponics — growing, marketing or certifying hydroponic produce, or selling “organically approved” fertilizers for use in hydroponic systems.
In tracking the comments, Cornucopia noted that the industry is making a concerted effort to change the language in the debate. The hydroponic industry is using an invented word, “bioponics,” that doesn’t appear in scientific or agricultural industry literature. They have also started calling their operations “container growing,” rather than hydroponics, even though liquid fertilizer is continuously delivered to plants in these operations.
“If the thirty thousand acres of conventional hydroponic production gains access to the organic label—with only minimal changes in production practices—that will signal the end of the diversified, regenerative, certified-organic family farm,” said Dixon.
The second hot button issue at the meeting is the proposal to allow the use of “biodegradable” plastic sheeting, or “mulch.” This plastic mulch is comprised of only 10-20% plant-based materials. Instead of removing the sheeting from the fields each season, as is currently required by law, a proposed rule change would allow letting the plastic film “biodegrade.” Plastic mulch is used by organic farmers to help warm the soil early in the growing season, control weeds, and retain moisture.
“The real problem with this proposal is the lack of any current research indicating what happens with the synthetic components of so-called biodegradable bio-mulches, which make up the majority of the material,” said Jerome Rigot, PhD, a Cornucopia scientist who prepared the organization’s comments on the issue.
It is known that some plants readily take up natural or man-made compounds in the soil. As an example, rice is very efficient at absorbing arsenic residues in soil, and incorporating them into their tissues, even years after the carcinogen was used as a pesticide.
Rigot added, “Although this material might break down in the environment into smaller, or even microscopic, pieces, it may very well add significant amounts of synthetic chemicals over time to the soil and possibly create toxicity for plants subsequently grown in the same fields.”
In addition to its potential effects on human health, the impact of bioplastics, and their breakdown constituents, on the microbiome of the soil is unknown. At a time when soil health is on the forefront of organic growers’ and consumers’ minds, introducing unknown and potentially damaging soil toxins would further jeopardize the integrity of the organic label. The Cornucopia Institute has formally asked the NOSB not to give the green light to these products until their use is proven safe.
Cornucopia’s scientific and legal analyses of key issues on the agenda for the upcoming meeting were included in the organization’s formal comments to the NOSB, and are publicly available at Cornucopia.org.
The semiannual NOSB meeting will be held April 19 through 21 at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Denver, Colorado, and is open to the public.
— The Cornucopia Institute
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