What’s the difference?: What seemed like organic fertilizer to farmers could have been spiked with the synthetic kind.Truck photo (left): Iris Shreve Garrott

It’s no secret that the organic food industry has seen explosive growth, taking only a mild drubbing through the recession and then continuing its ascent. At the heart of that growth has been trust — consumers are willing to shell out more bucks for organic because the food’s been grown without synthetic chemicals, with that claim verified from farm to market.

Yet two major cases of federal fraud have been filed in the past six months, rocking the California farming world and alleging that probably millions of pounds of produce sold as organic over several years weren’t worthy of the label.

So why haven’t you heard about this? Because the shady practices came from a side of the farming world that few shoppers think about: the fertilizer industry. And the real dupes weren’t consumers but organic farmers.

In March, Kenneth Nelson Jr. was indicted by a federal grand jury on 28 counts of mail fraud as part of long-running scheme to sell liquid fertilizer through Port Organic Products and several related businesses. He claimed the juice was made from fish meal, bird guano, and other organic-friendly products — but it turns out it may have been spiked with far cheaper synthetic fertilizer.

His was just the latest case. In October, FBI agents swooped into LAX and arrested Peter Townsley, who headed California Liquid Fertilizer in the Salinas Valley, the heart of the state’s produce industry. Although the company’s product was labeled as natural fertilizer made from fish, it also allegedly contained synthetic nitrogen — and it had been widely used by organic farmers for years.

“This was probably one of the most significant cases of fraud in the history of the NOP,” said Miles McEvoy, deputy administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP).

You can think of Townsley as the Bernie Madoff of the organic farming world, arrested and charged with mail fraud for submitting false statements about the juice, called Biolizer XN. Farmers applied his synthetic-nitrogen-rich fertilizer and then sold the crop as organic. Consumers at the end of the line were buying products they thought were grown organically but technically weren’t.

Secret sauce

Fertilizer has been a weak link in the organic chain for a number of reasons, although it hasn’t gotten little attention outside organic circles.

First, fertilizer companies fall outside of the USDA’s National Organic Program, so they aren’t required to be inspected by third parties and certified in the same way that farmers or food processors are. While organic rules spell out what can and can’t be applied to fields — and synthetic fertilizer is definitely not allowed — regulators at the USDA have no authority to take the next step and certify fertilizer manufacturers. Fertilizer oversight has rested with states.

Second, fraudulent fertilizer has been hard to detect. Only recently have tests evolved that can trace the source of fertilizer ingredients.

Finally, fertilizer is pretty far down the list of consumers’ reasons for buying organic, which tend to prioritize avoiding chemical residues over esoteric soil fertility practices.

“People are much more freaked out about pesticides than fertilizers,” said Brian Baker, who evaluated substances at the Organic Materials Review Board (OMRI) and now heads the Institute for Sustainability at Alfred State College in New York.

But this might be ecologically shortsighted. Baker points out that the biggest difference between organic and conventional farming isn’t the use or avoidance of chemical pesticides, “but the way the nitrogen cycle is managed.” Soils are often doused with synthetic fertilizers to raise yields, but the end result can be more pest and disease pressures, which in turn can lead to more pesticide use.

Instead of relying on petroleum- or ammonia-derived fertilizers to energize plants, organic farmers feed their soil with crop rotations, cover crops, and compost. They may supplement with concentrated fertilizers such as fish emulsion, but that’s an expensive measure and not the core of the soil fertility regime.

So how does a farmer know a substance conforms with organic methods? They rely on two bodies for help.  

Both the nonprofit Organic Materials Review Institute in Eugene, Ore., and the Washington State Department of Agriculture evaluate products such as fertilizers, soil amendments, and pest controls, then “list” the substance as allowable. (Even home gardeners can make use of the OMRI site to check out products). But they have no statutory authority to investigate or ban a product. At best, they can withhold a listing. Farmers can still use a product, but do so at their own risk.

With Biolizer XN, however, there was no grey area: By allegedly submitting false statements to OMRI, California Liquid Fertilizer’s product made the preferred list. And farmers used the stuff — from as early as 2000 until 2007.

Baker, the former OMRI official, said that he had inspected the company’s plant, though he noted that finding evidence of fraud was especially difficult — not only in this case but in others. He recalled that in the 1990s, one company claimed that a particularly potent organic fertilizer came from a secret lake bed in the Midwest.

“Every time we asked to see the lake, they refused,” he said. Turns out the lake didn’t exist.

That was the drill with questionable substances. OMRI would ask for documentation, set deadlines, and on some instances, ask to inspect a plant. “They’d fail to get back to us, or a deadline would lapse and we would not approve the product,” said Baker.

Stinking to high heaven

California Liquid Fertilizer was an especially popular product with a third of the California market, according to the Sacramento Bee, which broke the story. While growers for Earthbound, the largest organic produce company in the nation, and Driscoll’s — the big berry grower — had used the product, it wasn’t confined to large farms. Even organic CSAs used it.

Bob Scowcroft in 2008, in one of his signature shirts.Photo: Bart NagelAfter nearly three decades at the center of organic food and farming world, Bob Scowcroft recently retired as head of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). Scowcroft was California Certified Organic Farmers‘ first executive director in 1987, then went on to cofound and lead the OFRF for two decades. OFRF has played a key role on two fronts — advocating for organic farming research and pushing for a state, and then national, organic law.

With his penchant for bear hugs and loud Hawaiian shirts, and the sharp insights and confabs, like the Organic Summits he founded, Scowcroft is the organic world’s preeminent “connector.” He has street cred with everyone from Midwestern wheat farmers to CEOs from organic food companies — both of whom could be found at OFRF’s fundraisers, which were fueled by good food and wine.

Here, Scowcroft chats about the beginning of the organic movement and the “new blood” he’s excited about — yours.

Q. Now that organic farming’s been codified into a set of regulations, some people complain it allows too many exceptions. What do you think of such criticisms?

A. I think we should approach organic with the concept of continuous improvement. If you take that approach, then we should celebrate critiques that help us improve our system. They’re critical to our evolution. But if they’re delivered in the form of hate speech — “I will bring it all down before I’ll let it go forward” — that deserves the public condemnation it gets.

With the arrival of a new generation of organic activists, the personalities largely will become less important, and collaboration will become more important. I am actually most hopeful, if not utterly blown away, by the new youth movement in organic.

Q. So, as a member of the first generation of organic advocates, you’re now passing the torch?

A. Well, I’m really second generation. The first was J.I. Rodale, the folks at Walnut Acres, many others. I feel my generation, the second generation, took the organic vision and put it into practice. We showed that it could be done commercially.

Now we need to step aside. We’ve got to get out of the way for the 35- and 40-year-olds — the ones that Tweet organic research results, who understand organizing issues through Facebook. And who can lay out the five or 10 steps we need to take to get organic from 4 percent to 40 percent of the food system.

It took 30 years, I think, to get from .013 percent to 4 percent. Now we have to go to 40 percent. What’s it going to take?

Q. You think that’s realistic?

A. Yes. Actually, I think it’s a necessity. I think it’s urgent. How much longer is the soil going to run down the Mississippi? Think about how riveted we all were the oil pouring into the Gulf. You felt it, you saw it, you were hurt by it. But its size was only a third of the dead zone, which is there every year!

I think we’re facing a new level of urgency about our food system but hardly anyone in a position of authority is connecting the dots. We have an administration that’s more aware of this than most, but it can’t move on any one issue without tripping over a vested interest. That’s why this movement — led by the next generation — is vital.

Q. Let’s go back to the beginning, to California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), which is now a major certification organization. How’d you get involved with them?

A. I met CCOF through working at Friends of the Earth, which was fighting chemicals. At the time I was trying to ban two of them, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, which together comprise Agent Orange. And there was always another chemical to fight. One day a farmer found me, an incredibly wonderful cranky guy who’s since passed away, Sy Weisman, one of the founders of CCOF, and he said, “Why are you doing this? Get off the grid! You’re not gonna ban ‘em all! Be in favor of something good!”

Q. He said to push for an alternative?

A. Yes, he was saying, “You’re never going to succeed at this [banning thousands of toxic chemicals.] You should just be in favor of organic. It’s good! Be positive! All you environmentalists are against everything.”

So I joined CCOF as the director when it had regional chapters in the state, many doing their own thing. A bare majority of farmers wanted to make it a statewide group, to have one standard for all 12 chapters, so everyone would follow the same rules. A majority also wanted to professionalize the inspection and certification process. By then, it was clear that visiting your farm, having a cup of tea, looking in your backyard, and talking soil fertility wasn’t going to cut it anymore for certification. Eventually, our standards — ours and others — became the backbone of what is now the national organic law. In two and a half years, we grew from 170 to 740 farmers.

Q. How did you come to start the Organic Farming Research Foundation?

A. OFRF was an offshoot of CCOF. In 1990, we needed funding to balance our budget and looked to the grantmaking community for support. The CCOF Board approved the establishment of a sister foundation, which two organic farmers and I then set up. We got a grant that was largely funding the work of Brian Baker. He wrote a column called, “Science you can use,” which looked at what existing research there was on organic. Then we started giving grants — the very first one was to a farmer, Carl Rosato, to manage peach brown rot, a fungal disease. The method’s still used today. We began to encourage more proposals and actively push for more USDA funding of organic research.

Q. And you started holding conferences, which became pretty well known.

A. We held the first Organic Summit in ’93. Farmers, environmentalists, corporate executives, certifiers all showed up. I remember a guy named Miles McEvoy came from Washington state and met with two other state organic programs at a breakout session. He said, let’s form an ad-hoc working group of state agriculture departments. Now I think they have 35 states in that caucus, and Miles — who’s now head of the USDA’s National Organic Program — founded it.

Another amazing moment: We had a workshop on organic cotton and only five people showed up: an attorney, Gap, Levi’s, maybe Nike, and Patagonia. They casually said, We should start buying organic cotton, just to see if we could support this. So for many years, organic cotton farmers were supported by these companies. They weren’t promoting it, they weren’t advertising it, but they were buying it, and that helped organic cotton find a market.

We also wanted to look into what the USDA was doing in organic research and hired Mark Lipson (who is currently an organic and sustainable agriculture adviser at the USDA) in 1995 or so. He was an organic farmer north of Santa Cruz. He found out that the government had funded 34 organic research projects — out of 30,000. They weren’t collected, they weren’t accessible, and they weren’t easily identified as such. So we got a bunch of students to create a database of that type of information.

OFRF funded some of the earliest work on growing organic apples, strawberries, organic wheat. And a number of these research grants have led to adjustments in conventional farming practices, and I think that’s really important. We’ve always supported all farmers.

Q. Will you miss your perch in the organic world?

A. I feel really good about it. I’ve only had momentary regrets, mostly when I get a new idea — I’m still having new ideas — and there’s no one to share them with. But I won’t miss the intensity of the past 23 years, both at CCOF and OFRF. Somebody added up the money I raised over the years and it was about $17 million. That’s asking for $25, $100 donations, writing $50,000 proposals day in and year out. And frankly, asking for money is draining.

Zambian farmers grew plenty of maize without biotech seeds — so much so that it became a problem. Photo: Sam Fromartz

Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Zambia for a project for Worldwatch. The massive report “State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet,” released Wednesday, focuses on many projects that were highly effective in both feeding people and raising incomes in Africa. Much of this work was chronicled on Nourishing the Planet blog, as researcher Danielle Nierenberg logged thousands of miles criss-crossing the continent meeting with farmers, researchers, NGOs, and government officials. 

It was a refreshing perspective because so much of the discussion about agriculture in Africa focuses on production. Plant more. Increase yield. Improve seed technology. But there is really no silver bullet when it comes to food production and access, and the relentless focus on technology ends up being lopsided and incomplete — as I saw in Zambia.

The nation produces more than enough food, much of it by small-scale farmers without tractors, irrigation, or any form of transportation. But this excess food ends up rotting in warehouses and causes price crashes when it hits the market — good for buyers but dismal for small-scale farmers who depend on these sales for their meagre income.

Even so, some areas of the country still suffer from malnutrition and shortages. Why? There are many reasons, inadequate roads and supply networks among them, since it isn’t always easy to get the food from areas where it is surplus to areas where it is in short supply. In this reality, high-tech seeds are the least of the nation’s problems. And yet, on op-ed pages, that often seems to be the focus of discussion.

How come we hardly see op-eds on what paved roads, improved sanitation, more efficient distribution networks, soil conservation, and a reduction in food waste might do for world hunger? Fifteen percent of the grain harvest is wasted in poorer countries, according to a researcher quoted in this report. Even cutting that in half would amount to an enormous yield gain. The Worldwatch report attempts to jump-start this discussion by addressing these issues.

I sought to do the same in my chapter:

The Missing Links: Going Beyond Production

When people talk about African agriculture, food surpluses are not usually the focus of discussion. Invariably, the more familiar topics are famine, starvation, deforestation, and the vast inability of a continent to feed itself, which is brought home by the latest food crisis.

That’s why the headlines in Lusaka, Zambia, in May 2010, were so surprising, announcing a stunning bumper crop of maize. On the back of fertilizer subsidies and propitious rains, production by the nation’s 800,000 maize farmers had rocketed 48 percent to the highest level in 22 years. This boom came after a 31-percent rise the previous year. Now speculation was mounting about a crash in maize prices, especially during the dry June-August period. “A tidal wave of maize will be hitting the market,” predicted Rob Munro, a senior market development advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) in Lusaka.

In the cities, the focus was on the price of mealie meal, the porridge-like staple made from ground maize, and whether millers would pass on savings or fatten their profit margins. The government was fretting about what to do with all this food. Zambia had a 600,000-ton surplus from the 2009 harvest, some of which was still sitting in warehouses. And now on top of that, it would reap a 1.1 million-ton surplus for 2010. Exports were uncertain, because of sporadic trade restrictions. Plus, the crop was uncompetitive with South African maize, the low-cost producer in the region.

Zambia was growing so much food that the food itself had become an issue. Yet, it was also an unequivocal success. Zambian farmers had produced more than enough maize and done so without genetically modified crops or even, for the most part, irrigation and mechanized farm equipment. But further development raised a number of questions: If farmers actually modernized and improved their yields, would the surplus be even greater, dwarfing any political ability to deal with this bounty? And why were people still facing chronic hunger and childhood stunting in a country where the food was in oversupply?

The rest of the chapter addresses this issue, but it was clear from even my short stay in Zambia that a lack of agro-technology was not the most pressing issue faced by the nation’s farmers. From those I talked with, it hardly seemed on the radar screen in terms of what needed to be addressed.

Ignoring technology can be disastrous, but focusing on it out of context, and without regard to a host of related concerns, can be just as perilous since it suggests that food insecurity can be solved with a silver bullet. Only problem is, silver bullets can’t be eaten.

Cross-posted with permission from Chews Wise.

I never thought I’d be involved in a fight to save a city park, but here I am.

The Marines are progressing with plans to move and expand their facility in Washington, D.C. They are looking at one option of taking over Virginia Avenue Park where I happen to participate in a community garden.

A young Virginia Ave gardener(Sam Fromartz)Six years ago, the Virginia Avenue Community Garden, just a mile or so away from the US Capitol, was a deserted lot, with a broken playground, a ramshackle building, thriving drug activity, and not much else. But it was decent land, with full sun and lot of potential. So a few hardy gardeners on Capitol Hill took on the task of creating a community garden, working with the parks department, getting initial grants, trucking in compost and soil, and slowly turning the park into an urban oasis that now is home to 60 gardening families, a fruit orchard, a fig tree and blackberry brambles — all of it organic.

Needless to say, those families are not happy, nor are those who use this open space to run their dogs, walk, or bike. In large part, this park has become a wonderful community resource because of the garden. Over several years, gardeners have worked to restore the park, which was a previously run-down lot.

While I see the value of bringing more vibrant development to this area, it should not be at the expense of the community nor at the cost of open space in D.C. Indeed, this open space could serve as an anchor and attraction to new development.

If the Marines choose the park for their development, it will extend their barracks and facilities down 8th St. SE and nearly connect with the Navy Yard, making for a large nearly contiguous military facility on Capitol Hill South. As currently envisioned, the new development could approach nearly 1 million square feet.

As one person said to me, while sympathetic to the security needs of the Marines to move their current barracks, “I don’t want Quantico on Capitol Hill.” 

To promote other options, the Save Virginia Avenue Park has a Facebook page and a petition, which we encourage people (especially DC residents) to sign, “friend,” and Tweet. We want a good neighbor in the Marines. We just don’t want to lose a park.

Adapted and cross-posted from ChewsWise. Thanks to Roadside Organics for the video.

The organic farming community is seeking a few tender morsels off the Congressional table, to help farmers get into the organic sector. I explained these on Chews Wise, with links to more in-depth documents, but the main points are these: Organic farmers seek research, so growers can more easily figure out how to farm organically, and funds are needed to offset the costs of certification and aid farms through the difficult transition period.

• Basic research funds. Currently organic farming research only gets about $3 million in dedicated funds out of a USDA research budget of about $2 billion. They want $15 million.
• Certification cost share. Farmers can get up to $500 annually to offset up to 75 percent of the costs of organic certification, but much of that money has run out. (This $500-per-farm subsidy is the only one specifically for organic farmers and is aimed at smaller operations.)
• Transition support. The lobby is looking for $50 million per year to help farmers with the three-year transition to organic farming.

Environmental Working Group recently launched a site to gin up support on the issue and generate 30,000 signatures to lawmakers by July 15. The point is to win baseline funding for organic agriculture, so that it can be increased in the next farm bill. If the baseline is near zero, it isn’t going to move at all — not in the next bill, or the one after that — and farmers will continue to sit on the sidelines.

When you wonder why organic products are coming from overseas, you will have your answer: the modest government incentives and research U.S. farmers needed to pursue organic farming weren’t available. So they didn’t bother to switch.

Among his more startling revelations: that McDonald’s fish sandwich is more sustainable than Nobu’s menu (the restaurant for the stars), because it is sourced from an Alaskan fishery certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. McDonald’s, though, does not advertise the MSC label because then it would have to pay a licensing fee.

That’s a lesson in the organic market, which witnessed a first this week: a mega-organic dairy with 10,000 cows (3,500 “organic”), which was clearly skirting regulations, was suspended by a certifier and no longer allowed to sell “organic” milk.

I blogged on this development over at Chews Wise, and only bring it up here because the organic market is one of the most developed green markets. It has been around for nearly three decades and has been defining national regulations in the U.S. at least since 1990. With the increasing popularity of the food, a lot of new producers have rushed into the market and there have been clear attempts to skirt or push the envelope of those regulations.

At first, no one seemed to notice, since industry players seemed content to benefit from the growing market size and not rock the boat too much.

But then consumer and farmer advocacy groups began blowing their horns, revealing these practices and trying to restore integrity to the market. In the dairy sector, that move was pursued on two fronts: by coalitions of smaller organic dairy farmers who were clearly losing at the expense of bigger operations, and by an advocacy group known as the Cornucopia Institute.

They “outed” the violators with a publicity campaign, essentially holding the organic market to greater transparency. And secondly, they sought to rewrite the organic regulations so that those pushing the envelope would be reined in.

As a result, public pressure built on the USDA National Organic Program and on certifiers.

The result: Last month, QAI, a major certifier, suspended the organic operations of the Case Vander Eyk farm in the Central Valley of California. This was significant — the first time a certifier of this sort of mega-dairy has taken this type of action.

The regulatory reform is happening at a much slower pace, though the USDA promises to reveal some sort of regulation on dairy practices this summer.

In the meantime, this advocacy has produced its own brand of consumer journalism on the net. This blog post and video eulogy of the farm was posted by a person who lives nearby.

What’s the upshot? It’s necessary to have tough regulations and to continually refine them in reaching for the goal of a sustainable market … but it is not sufficient. What’s also needed is awareness, continual advocacy, and political pressure.

In a victory for organic farmers in the developing world and organic coffee drinkers here, the USDA’s National Organic Program has backed down and said that there will be no immediate change in the way these farmers are certified.

The NOP had quietly announced in March that it was changing certification procedures for these farms, meaning that their future as organic farmers was in jeopardy. The change would have increased costs sharply and choked off the supply of organic coffee, cocoa, and other crops from farming co-ops in the Third World. I wrote about the issue at length on Salon and kept hammering away over at Chews Wise blog. A petition campaign soon started, fueled in part by caffeinated Gristies. The National Organic Coalition organized the drive and roasters like Equal Exchange also played an active role. Hats off to them.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the NOP said it was keeping the “status quo” and would work with the National Organic Standards Board — the citizens advisory panel on organic regulations — on any changes. This is key, for it means that any future changes will come in the form of official “rulemaking,” leaving room for public comment and refinement. This is the way it should have happened in the first place.

For those who think organic regulations have been compromised by big business, this shows — as other actions have in the past — that transparency and advocacy work. In other words, we’ve got to keep manning the barricades to keep it real.

The NOP statement issued today can be read in full here.

Grist had a spirited discussion on this previously.

A comment from Equal Exchange over at Chews Wisely states:

We at Equal Exchange are working with others in the National Organic Coalition to collect signatures for 2 seperate petitions to be submitted to the USDA asking they delay this ruling and focus on making the current group certification system work better (rather than just tossing it out). 1 petition is for organizations and businesses to sign. 1 is for individuals.

Equal Exchange notes, “we have voluntarily raised the guaranteed price we’ll pay for organic Fair Trade coffee from $1.41 to $1.56. (For conventional Fair Trade coffee we now pay $1.36). By comparison the world market price for coffee today is only $1.10.”