Organic, local farms get a boost from USDA

Washington - -- Obama administration officials Wednesday outlined a broad array of efforts to elevate organic and local farming to a prominence never seen before at the sprawling U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The shift is raising eyebrows among conventional growers and promising federal support to a food movement that began in Northern California and was considered heretical only a few years ago.

"Guys, this is your window - use it," USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan told organic farmers, processors and retailers at a conference Wednesday in Washington that was sponsored by Santa Cruz's Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Organic Trade Association.

When her microphone went dead as she discussed genetically modified foods, a member of the audience joked, "They're already sabotaging you."

Talking more like a Berkeley foodie than a USDA bureaucrat, Merrigan described efforts to penetrate "food deserts" in poor neighborhoods where people rely on corner markets and liquor stores for groceries, tougher enforcement of the USDA organic label and initiatives such as the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program to connect local farmers with consumers.

From last March

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/Obama-food-policy-may-mean-end-of-farmers-markets-family-farms-41555407.html

Obama food policy may mean end of farmers markets, family farms
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
March 20, 2009

President Barack Obama made some foodies’ hearts melt on the campaign trail by referring to writer Michael Pollan, who has helped spark a revival in local, unprocessed food. But Obama’s push for strict new federal food-safety regulations could drive organic food and farmers markets into the back alleys.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, touted as a consumer protection bill, is backed by the giants of the affected industries, such as General Mills and the National Restaurant Association, while posing possibly lethal threats to smaller market players like family farms and local produce.
Last Saturday, Obama dedicated his weekly radio address to food safety, declaring “there are certain things only a government can do, and one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat… are safe and don’t cause us harm.”
Obama didn’t specifically back any legislation, but his words gave momentum to House and Senate bills that would expand federal control over farms—or, as the House bill, HR 875, calls them, “food production facilities.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., is the sponsor of HR 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act.” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has introduced a similar measure in the upper chamber.
Both measures would ramp up federal inspection of farms, impose reporting requirements on farmers, and dramatically lower the threshold at which the federal government can seize food it believes could make people sick.
The lineup of backers and opponents of these bills has surprised some observers, but it shouldn’t. Big food processors—including the makers of some recently recalled foods—support the legislation, while leading advocates of local produce, organic food, and farmers markets are vocally resisting the measures.
Science and environment writer Steve Nash in The New Republic Monday praised Durbin’s bill as a “good idea,” and expressed surprise that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, “who many decried as corporate, conventional, and something of a shill for Big-Ag” would come out for greater federal regulation, too.
But also supporting the Durbin bill, the DeLauro bill, or both, are Kraft Foods, General Mills, Kellogs, Pepsico (maker of Frito-Lay brand snacks), the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and the National Restaurant Association.
Meanwhile, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), which supports organic farmers, raw-milk sellers, and other small growers, calls the DeLauro bill “a major threat to sustainable farming and the local food movement.” The Organic Consumers Association also opposes the bill.
Regulation falls more heavily on smaller businesses, and DeLauro’s bill is no exception. For one, according to the FTCLDF, “Farmers selling direct to consumers would have to make their customer list available to federal inspectors.”
DeLauro’s measure would create a new federal Food Safety Agency to regulate all farms. Both bills order federal regulators to set new “minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls animal encroachment, and water.”
As Debbie Stockton of the FTCLDF puts it, “Anywhere food is produced, the federal government can send someone out to the farm and tell them how to run things.”
These rules would also cover food factories, but Galen Reser, vice president for government affairs at Pepsico, which processes snack food under its Frito-Lay brand, told this columnist “I think the industry is pretty comfortable with” the regulatory burden of Durbin’s bill, maintaining there are no significant “unnecessary costs.”
Big business is not only more able to bear the costs of regulation, but also better positioned to craft the regulation in beneficial ways. Kraft Foods, for instance, spent $3.68 million last year on its lobbying effort, which includes William Lesher, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Agriculture.
When the fine print is ironed and when the agencies implement the regulations, Kraft and Big Agriculture will have a say, but your local organic farmer won’t. As Stockton puts it, “There is no distinction now between industrial agriculture and federal regulatory agencies.”
The irony—typical in these political rushes to regulate—is that this food safety regulation could harm food safety by consolidating the food industry. The Centers for Disease Control make this very point: “An increasingly centralized food supply means that a food contaminated in production can be rapidly shipped to many states causing a widespread outbreak.”
Obama can pay lip service to local, unprocessed food, but if he joins the rush to regulate, Stockton argues, “There will be no more small farms. Consumers who have come to depend on local food will find it’s not available anymore.”

I agree with the idea that market should regulate itself. Being involved in organic food industry for a decide and running a www.organicdirect.com business I have seen a dynamic of industry growing form being “deregulated” and now “overly regulated”. Results? Definitely, more money now going into a regularity body for certification and paper pushing. A lot of farmers I work with do not want to be involved into certificatio process, because: first its a hassle to get a certification and is an additional overhead. Second, there is not much they can get out of certification, because they still sell to the same market and clientelle ,and it does not give them an additional leverage. What make a leverage, is the name of their farm and their reputation within the community, that is earned by their family’s hard work for generations. They do not compete with giant “faceless” corporations that flash the organic certificate to excite consumers. Is their product better or worse? Who knows? All I know, that many of those corporations import organic certified products from oversees to increase margins, so food sometimes travels for quite a while,before goes to the store. What can be done? I think let the public decide. Let government to enforce full disclosure about the practices and origin of the product, enforce displaying it to the public similarly to nutritional facts and them let public to decide what choice to make.

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