Organic farms are a growing concern

“Consumers see organic products as fitting in with a healthful life,” OTA spokeswoman Holly Givens said.

To meet growing demand from increasingly health conscious consumers and supermarket chains, farmers and ranchers are scaling up production and converting land to meet organic standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the USDA’s rules, organic produce must be grown without synthetic fertilizers or bioengineering and animals raised without antibiotics or growth hormones. A separate industry of government-approved organic certifiers has emerged to inspect farms and food handlers to ensure they conform. Some advocates don’t think the rules go far enough and are asking for a requirement that dairy cows be pasture-fed, not raised on feedlots.

The latest USDA survey in 2003 found that 2.2 million acres of farmland and ranchland had been certified organic, but that number is believed to have risen substantially since then, said Jake Lewin, director of marketing at California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the country’s largest certifiers.

Concerns about the increasing commercialism of organic farming reached a new level this spring when Wal-Mart announced it was joining other major grocery chains in ramping up organic sales.

Some small farmers worried that the world’s biggest retailer, notorious for squeezing suppliers to get the lowest price, would push them out of business.

Other advocates welcome the news, saying growers would benefit from rising demand and consumers would see prices drop. In the past, organic food has been associated with high-end retailers like the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain.

“It will bring organic to a whole new economic stratum that our farmers’ markets and natural food stores have been unable to reach,” said Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif.

But others worry that as more farmers shift to organic production to meet the needs of big supermarket chains, they will drive down food quality and weaken standards.

For example, some suppliers have been marketing organic soybeans and other products grown overseas, where it’s harder to determine whether farms meet U.S. standards, said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, in Finland, Minn.

“We’re heading for a consumer crisis over standards and the outsourcing of organic products from overseas,” Cummins said. “There will be continuing conflict between consumers, the USDA and companies not playing by the rules.”

UC Berkeley’s Pollan encourages environmentally minded consumers to shop at their local farmers’ market. When they buy organic products in supermarkets, those items must be refrigerated and often transported long distances, consuming as much fossil fuel as the conventional food system, he said.

“If organic means anything, it should mean that this food has a lighter environmental footprint,” Pollan said. “It’s really the supermarket and the supermarket shopper that drive the industrialization of organic.”

But Earthbound’s Myra Goodman said organic farmers can’t be expected to solve the problems of the U.S. food distribution system. Her company has a good relationship with Wal-Mart, whose organic expansion plans represent “the democratization of organics.”

“The vast majority of food is bought in supermarkets,” Goodman said. “Those people should have an organic choice.”

MORE FROM FOOD INC.

Food Inc. Section Front

Tough times seem to benefit General Mills Early ‘Boston Market’ restaurateur dead at 52 Domino’s changing pizza recipe McDonald's to lift fee for Internet access Campbell Soup to change SpaghettiOs recipe McDonald's serving up breakfast dollar menu Costco will resume carrying Coke products General Mills cutting sugar in kids' cereal McDonald’s: U.S. same-store sales dip Transgender teen: McDonald’s discriminates Food Inc. Section Front   Add Food Inc. headlines to your news reader: