For years, organic stakeholders have repeatedly called on USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) to take significant steps to improve oversight of organic systems and enforcement of the USDA organic regulations. The need for this action stems from a rapidly expanding organic market, high demand for organic products, an increasingly complex supply chain, and unfortunately, the growing occurrence of organic fraud. On August 5, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) published its formal response in the form of a 124-page proposed rule, titled “Strengthening Organic Enforcement.” This action ..read more

Currently, all eyes are on the food sector, and in particular, its ability to adapt to the pandemic and to meet the needs of American consumers through our farmers. As the COVID-19 pandemic exposes vulnerabilities throughout our food system, it highlights the call for resiliency at all points in the supply chain to meet the needs of consumers. Amid reports that some companies are struggling to keep products in stock in light of pandemic pressures, shoppers are concerned whether they can balance availability with affordability for the range of foods they would like to choose for their families ..read more

 Acting on a recommendation of the association’s Farmers Advisory council (FAC), the Board of Directors of the Organic Trade Association has voted unanimously for congressional action on two tracks to help farmworkers now and in the future. The trade association seeks both passage for immigration reform giving undocumented farmworkers a pathway to legal status, and action to safeguard the well-being of these workers during the current coronavirus outbreak. The Board voted to support the Farm Workforce Modernization Act as well as other advocacy efforts to protect agricultural workforce s ..read more

In these chaotic times marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, social and economic upheaval, and already record-breaking extreme weather events taking their toll on crops and communities, people are thinking more about what it takes to be resilient. In the biological world, resilience has always been the critical underpinning for a healthy environment. Organic farming provides that resilience, and helps farms and whole ecosystems bounce back in the face of biological disturbance, particularly in the context of environmental disasters associated with climate change. Across the world and in the U.S ..read more

Finding solutions to plastic pollution is a growing concern for many organic companies--and consumers. For Javier Zamora, owner of JSM Organics on California’s Central Coast, using non-plastic packaging is a choice he made more than three years ago for packing berries and vegetables. “A lot of our customers were concerned about the use of plastic clamshell packaging, and it was also a personal concern for me,” he says. When faced with the opportunity to avoid the use of plastic containers and instead use biodegradable cardboard-like compostable containers, Zamora said he immediately agreed. A ..read more

As shifts in food and ag proliferate, organic stays relevant and sets the bar Last holiday season, we hosted over a two-week period our Keto-eating millennial relative (LOTS of meat), our vegan/plant-based friend (NO meat), along with other various flexitarian (SOMETIMES meat, depending on the day), grass-fed-milk-drinking (self-explanatory), Weight Watchers-following (Purple plan -- count the points!) and I’ll-eat-anything family members and acquaintances. The one common thread in all the menu preparations? As much organic food and organic ingredients as possible.  Today’s increasingly s ..read more

The Country Hen was founded by George Bass after his experiences running a commercial poultry operation, complete with its own feed mill, in Bogota, Colombia. The feed ingredients available were grown using heavy amounts of pesticides and herbicides. This weighed heavily on him and, after reading Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” he was inspired to produce eggs based on natural and organic principles, making life better for the birds as well as reducing the chemical exposure for humans. He packed up and came back to the United States in search of a facility and landed in a little town called H ..read more

The Organic Trade Association’s Member Day in D.C. in May. kicked off with a crucial discussion on the long-term challenge of providing technical assistance for organic production.  Members heard about two major initiatives, both focused on “training the trainers” to expand the supply of organically fluent educators. Anders Gurda, currently with Pipeline Foods, spoke about the new Organic Agronomy Training Series (OATS), a new form of organic training for Midwestern commodity crop advisors. In addition, Lindsay Haines of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Ser ..read more

Across the value chain, organic producers, processors, retailers, consumers, and other stakeholders are actively engaging to advance organic standards and federal oversight to maintain a strong, trusted, and verified Organic seal. The first half of 2019 is a story of the organic industry getting fraud under control.Multi-year federal investigations into fraud allegations have paid off, resulting in sweeping enforcement actions against bad actors in the Black Sea region. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) National Organic Program’s (NOP) special initiatives to detect ..read more

For well over a decade, organic dairy farmers have been waiting for consistent rules for transitioning dairy livestock to organic. The organic regulations allow conventional dairy animals to be transitioned into organic production after being raised organically for one year prior to milk being sold as organic. This was meant to be a one-time allowance so that dairy farms had the opportunity to convert their farm to organic without having to purchase an entirely new herd. However, a loophole in the current regulations has allowed some farms to continuously transition animals into organic produ ..read more