Tape #241 - Ecological Sustainability and Organic Standards

I'll tell you the super special reason why I like speaking to this audience and that is that virtually the entire time I've been in government working for the Economic Research Service, I've given presentations and most of the time they've been mostly men.  In some cases all men in the audience, so this is super special treat to have a near all female audience.

The other reason is that I did grow up in a farm family and the leadership role really in my farm family was played by my grandmother.  And she not only was the leader of the farm operation, but she instilled a life long passion for growing things in both of her children and virtually all of her grandchildren.  So those both go to why I'm happy to be here today.  And I'm Kathy Green with USDA Economic Research Service.

I'll give you a little kind of overview of how our panel is fitting together.  None of us were originally booked to be on this panel actually.  So, I think that we got a really splendid presentation for you today.  I'm going to really focus on what the organic market looks like in terms of the numbers.  It's definitely a thriving market.

Organic farming is at the end of the ecological continuum from conventional to more bio intensive methods of doing things all the way up to organic farming which really the objective and goals are to grow crops based on ecological natural processes.  And then our second panelist is going to talk about a case study that she's working on in Sri Lanka and her case study growers, she's trying to help growers move from conventional highly chemical production systems in the direction of more biological ecological systems.  And she's going to talk a little bit about why it is important for the females in her country and a little bit about the health impacts and some of the success they're having with their project.  And our third panelist Faye Jones is actually an organic farmer and she's going to give us an overview of the market a bit and also tell us about her operation and how she'd made it work for her. 

So let me start going with the gross statistics for organic farming in the U.S. and a little bit in contexts of other countries in the world and then I'm going to talk a little bit about eco-labeling and how certification and marketing fit in with that and a little bit on what the niches for organic food are like in the U.S. mostly and then a little bit about the policies that the U.S. and some of the other countries in Europe and a little bit in other parts of the world are like for promoting organic farming.  And turn it over to the second panelist after that.

The picture for organic farming in the U.S. is that it's still a very very small part of U.S. agriculture, but it's an extremely fast growing part of U.S. agriculture and its a part that generates a lot of excitement in many quarters.  Our statistics, the only statistics that USDA actually has at this point are for the early 90's.  And in 1994, we were showing only two tenths of a percent of crop land under certified organic farming systems.  However, one percent of the fruit and vegetables systems in the U.S. are under certified organic farming systems.  We're showing a lot of growth though.  The growth between 1991 and 1995 was 15 to 20% per year in terms of the amount of acreage increased under certified organic farming systems.

The number of growers in the U.S. is just over 5,000 that we've counted up.  This is a private sector report that showed the 15 to 20% increase from 94 USDA numbers and those are certified.  3/4 of those growers were growing fruits and vegetables.  It's still heavily dominated with the specialty crop sector. 

To make it seem not quite so small, there's probably at least that many growers who are managing their farms under certified organic farming systems, but they're not getting certified at this point.  The reason for that is that some of them are in transition to certified organic production systems.  Also a lot of small growers and other growers are not are simply not using third party systems.  They don't need to for the marketing style that they have. 

I am working on a project in USDA's Economic Research Service right now to try to bring us closer up to the present in terms of how many farmers and how much acreage we have under certified organic farming systems.  And hopefully we'll be able to report that before too long.  We do have some sort of antidotal statistics from some major ag states which would suggest that since 95 we are still continuing to show that major growth pattern in the U.S. in terms of growers starting up or converting to certified organic farming systems.

In California in 1995 there were 1,561 farmers and handlers registered in the state of California to do organic production and in 1998 there were 2300 farmers registered.  That's 47% increase for the last few years. 

In Iowa which is probably many of you here know is a heartland, major grain producing state in the U.S.  In 1993 Iowa was reporting 10,000 acres under certified organic farming systems and in 1997 they're reporting 62,000 acres under organic farming systems.

Miscellaneous states from elsewhere also would suggest that there are pockets of especially fast growth towards those systems.  Maine is one of those places.  Maine reports that 4% of their farms are under certified organic farming systems. 

I'm going to say a little something about the international statistics.  Europe has the best reported statistics that I'm aware of in the world.  Their reporting as well as perhaps, I don't know this, but perhaps some of the fastest growth in the world.  In 1997 Austria had 11% of its acreage under certified organic farming systems.  Sweden and Denmark had 4% of their acreage under certified organic farming systems.  Finland and Germany were 2% organic.  France and the UK are lot more similar to the U.S.  A more substantial amount of acreage total, but still a very tiny percentage or proportion of the total amount of farm land under certified organic farming systems.  Probably less than two tenths of a percent.  Very similar to the U.S.

Other countries I've seen reports that organic farming is increasing.  I've seen reports from China, from several countries in South America.  Also some fair trade coffee growing reports for Africa that organic farming systems are taking hold in countries in a lot parts of the world. 

I'm going to move to the second part of my speech which is loosely labeled eco-labeling, certification and marketing. 

Why are producers going to organic farming systems?  There are a lot of reasons, but I would say that some of the top reasons include the price premiums that we're seeing for organic food commodities and also input cost.  We're basically in a situation in the U.S. where input costs have continued going up for decades and in a lot of cases for pesticides, for example, a lot of chemicals are loosing their effectiveness because of pest resistance and other problems.

So input costs is another reason.  And another reason that producers give in surveys and personal conversation is simply the health risks from exposure to pesticides.  We still don't have a lot of really good information about health risks from pesticides, particularly .... I was going to try to address that a little bit. The consumer health risks, I think, we still have a lot of questions.  There are scientific protocol still not at a state to tell us definitive answers about what kinds of health risks we're facing. 

For farmers, I think we have a lot of good information that farmers, their spouses, this children, people in the community are at greater risk for mirrored of chronic illnesses.  And the best information that I'm aware of on that topic comes from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of Health researchers there have been studying cancer risk for 25 years from occupational exposure and they report that in general the farm population has lower levels of a lot of cancers that are found in the general population, but that a certain cancers are elevated in the farm population and they have linked that to pesticide exposure.  And the National Institutes of Health along with several other government agencies have a long term study going on right now in Iowa and North Carolina basically to tract the health of all the pesticide applicators in both of those states and they also have a contingent of spouses and their children within that study.  So hopefully we're going to have better information on that topic before a lot more years pass.

Why are consumers interested in organic agriculture?  Well, for a lot of the same reasons.  Consumers have enduringly expressed interest in lower pesticide use on the farm and on the foods that they buy.  Consumer studies -- starting in the early 90's a lot of consumer studies kind of broke out what is it about pesticides that you don't like and a lot of those studies have shown that consumers aren't really just interested in their own personal health, but they're also interested in the environmental damages from pesticides and they're also interested in the safer conditions for farm workers that are created by lower use of pesticide.

What kind of numbers do we have on what the markets are doing?  All the numbers we have on the organic market itself on retail sales come from the private sector at this point and the Natural Food Merchandiser has done a survey for the last eight years on what are the sales at retail and what they report is that organic foods have been growing at 20% a year well since 1990.  And I think that they topped four billion in 1997. 

Do eco-labels give producers the marketing advantage?  Certified organic labels are clearly an eco-label.  And clearly growers are using them to gain price premiums that consumers are willing to pay for organically produced foods.  Organic labels are different and you could probably argue substantially different from some of the other labels that have been and maybe emerging in the eco-labeling category.  Organic labels are different from the IPM labels that I've seen which are also sometimes attached to a certified systems.  They're different in that the IPM labels, made in nature labels which are IPM and the pander label which may emerge are IPM systems and as such they are encouraging producers to move towards a less. 

IPM is integrated pest management and its a system of getting better information about pests before spraying chemicals on them so hopefully you can reduce the amount of chemicals you're spraying and also to encourage growers to incorporate biological controls.  IPM is very much focused on pest management whereas organic agriculture is focused on the entire system of production so that you're really talking about composting and green manuring and the entire spectrum of nutrient management and pest management and ecological farm production with organic.

So organic labels are different in that respect and they're also different in that 30 states in the U.S. have legal definitions of organic.  So there is a legal sub-straight for organic which doesn't really exist for integrated pest management and the other eco-labels that have begun to emerge.

In 1990 Congress passed an Organic Foods Production Act to establish national standards in the U.S.  The Act would require USDA is currently in the process, as many of you know, implementing that Act and when implemented would require all farmers in the U.S. except for the very smallest farmers to obtain third party certification. 

As a rule most processors in the U.S. are requiring certification for organic production in the U.S. already.  And even smaller growers, I think are finding some marketing flexibility or finding it useful as a marketing tool in their production systems and marketing systems.  Yes

[inaudible - not at microphone]

So your question is about a transition period and how can producers afford it?  I think, your question is part of why Congress passed the Organic Food Protection Act to better facilitate marketing interstate in the U.S. and between countries, trade between countries.  The system in the U.S. I think three years is the standard transition period for most of the certifying organizations in the U.S. and all of the certifications, all of the certifiers in the U.S. require inspections.  I don't, I think that probably varies, probably some do it quarterly, probably some do it annually.  I'm not an expert on all the details of the certification.  What I'm going to do is finish up my lecture really fast and then let the other two speakers speak and then I think our moderator that we were to wait until the end for all of our questions from the audience.

Let me push on so that I don't cut into the other speaker's time too bad.

I was simply going to say about Europe at this point that a number of countries in Europe is similar to the U.S. in having a panolopy certification organizations.  The U.S. has a dozen states that provide certification services and at least three dozens private organizations.  Several of which have international accreditation with Europe to be able to export to markets in Europe.  But it is a very very strict set of standards that probably some of you in the office are much more familiar with than I am. 

One final note because we don't at this point have a requirement in the U.S.  Many states don't still have a requirement that you must certify, but I think that a lot of even small growers are seeing the benefit of certifying for their marketing.  Even farmers and preponderance we have USDA government statistics which show probably half of the fruit and vegetable farmers are marketing direct.  They're not selling to the big certifiers and to the big processors and etc.  And even for them it's a marketing tool and it gives them an edge in the farmer markets and elsewhere where they're marketing.

I wanted to touch on what those market niches are where organic growers are going with their products in the U.S.  All of the outlets that conventional food producers are taking their products to organic producers are also taking their products to.  So big supermarkets now carry organic food in the U.S. and processors are taking organic food, brokers, wholesalers, exporters all of marketing organic food as well as conventional food.  And organic growers have other markets that they're also taking their products to, especially developing their products for.  The big supermarket format, natural food stores is probably the one of the biggest sources at this point for organic food in the U.S.  It's much more is going through the supermarket size natural food stores than through conventional supermarkets or through co-ops and small natural food stores.  So big conventional style outlets have really developed organic and that's really what's brought some of the producers along in recent years.

But direct marketing is still used much more prevalently by organic farmers than by conventional farmers in the U.S. and the direct marketing outlets, we're just getting a handle on how fast that they're growing at this point.  There's been a renaissance in farmers markets and other direct markets in the U.S. in the 90's. 

Some statistics are farmer markets increased 37% in two years between 1993 and 1995 according to USDA statistics.  According to statistics compiled by Bio Dynamic Association an organic association in New York, the number of CSA, Consumer Supported Agriculture subscription services increased from 397 in the U.S. in 1993 to 523 in 96 to over a thousand currently.  Clearly consumers are enjoying relationship with growers by having subscription services with the farmers that are growing their food. 

Price premiums are a big thing for organic producers.  They're a big thing for making producers as I said earlier possibly interested in shifting in that direction.  Organic carrots, we only have a few public statistics.  In fact I think organic carrots is the only USDA ag marketing service report that we actually have and its from the Boston Market and all of US at this point.  USDA's been looking into reporting prices for organic.  USDA hasn't gotten there yet.  According to the price premiums reported at the Boston Market organic carrots carried a 110% premium for 1996.  That was the average premium for the year. 

A ag economist in South Dakota has just reported in one of our agricultural statistic magazines the corn, soybeans, spring wheat and oats price premiums based on a private sector report for the last three years.  He reported premiums of organic corn over the U.S. cash price for corn of 35, 44 and 73% for the years 1995, 96, and 97.  He reported premiums that showed that same pattern or slightly less for the organic price premium compared with the futures market price.  For spring wheat and oats there were similar price premiums, 54, 60, 74% for spring wheat, oats 35, 59 and 73% for the organic premium compared with the conventional cash price.

The commodities are corn, soybeans, spring wheat and oats.  And I just read you the price premium average monthly price premiums for the years 95, 96 and 97.  Those commodities produced organically over their conventional counterparts, the U.S. cash price.  And he also reported those prices compared with the futures market price and the premiums were slightly less, but they were still following that same pattern.

Soybeans were even higher price premiums for 95 and 96 they were doubled the U.S. cash price for the conventional commodities.  And the price premiums for soybeans broke away from conventional soybeans last fall.  So they went even way higher than double. 

Quickly, coming to the end here.  Policies in the U.S. -- In the U.S. we've really followed a unaggressive policy of assisting organic producers.  Basically, providing technical information and that's it.  In Europe, obviously, subsidies have been used somewhat extensively since the late 80's and would appear to play a major role in why so much more of the land is converted to organic than in the U.S.

Hopefully, at least our unagressive policies of providing market and technical support will start to come along shortly.  We are in USDA is setting up some programs to try to provide to look at what market information is needed and to try to start providing that information and a number of technical support policies not policies but information provisions may begin to help as well.  The ag research service has started doing area-wide biological pest management programs in several states.  At least ten universities have done long term cropping system studies that included organic component.  And another five are just getting started with that kind of research project.  Some of the conservation and insurance programs that have been available to conventional producers maybe slightly more accessible to organic producer in the future.  And finally university and extension services may actually start producing some production information that would be useful for organic farmers as well.

Minnesota has just published a organic guideline for crop producers and an organic field crop handbook for crop producers in Minnesota.  Ohio has on-line disease management and other crop production systems information for organic producers for apples in that state.  And North Carolina has published an organic lawn care handbook for the rest of us. 

I'm going to close it there and I've gone over my time and we have two more wonderful speakers.  I had some quotes for you from Paul Hawkins who ecology of commerce, the Business of Green Businesses and he made in the beginning of his book which was published in the early 90's some suggestions for achieving and enduring society and a couple of them seem especially appropriate for people who are interested in organic production.

1.  Honor market principles, 2.  exceed Sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and eco-systems to their fullest biological capacity.  And you know I think that's one of the most important things that I've seen organic growers talk about.  They just love the way their soils and crops look.  3.  Defining engaging and strive ecstatic outcome. 

We're moving on to our other two panelist who will also introduced themselves again.

[Applause]

Thank you very much.  First of all I want the two other panelist, I want to thank them very much for including me in their panel at the last moment because of a scheduling mixup, I have been changed from another panel to this one.  So if I presentation is a little bit broad in the sense of looking at soci-economic impact as well as the problems with industrial chemical agriculture, you please bare with me because this is suppose to go elsewhere.  And I should also introduce myself. [inaudible] from Sri Lanka, but I live and work in the United States as women studies professor at Montoya college.

But I'm also a consultant in the field women in international development and I've been doing more and more work on women in agriculture particularly in Asia.  And I be talking about two projects that I'm involved with in Sri Lanka which is where I come from on IPM and organic agriculture. 

So what's interesting to note is why public consciousness is increasing about organic agriculture in the so called industrialized countries in the north, the richer countries.  The pesticide treadmill is intensifying in some other parts of the world particularly in the so-called poor countries in the south.  And a lot of pesticides that have been banned in countries like the United States are being dumped into so-called third world countries.  And I think to begin with we shouldn't see this as two separate issues because even if we have very high organic standards in the privileged countries, it's still going to come back through the exported foods and vegetables and fruits that are also been produced increasingly in the third world under very disastrous conditions both environmentally and socially.  And of course, the pesticide residues come back to us via eco system.  Even if export agriculture per se is brought down to a certain extent. 

So I think that we have to look at what is happening in countries link Sri Lanka as a global issue rather than something that only pertains to a particular region.  Because of the obviously the inter-related nature not only of the eco-system but of the global economy. 

Now when we talk about this, I think there is no way of addressing it without looking at corporate dominance.  Who is doing the production?  Who is doing the distribution?  And who is accountable?  Now if you look at Sri Lanka for example, there are about just a handful of corporate subsidies of multi-national corporations like Bear or Sheer but distributing or formulating pesticides locally and they're using extremely sophisticated marketing strategies, you know PR people, very attractive posters to promote this.  Also using radio, television and it is being presented to the farmers as the way to the future.  You know this is the way to increase your yields quickly and this is you know what we're learning from the rest.

And in the process, what is being forgotten and ignored is the traditional systems of [inaudible] agriculture that these farmers have practiced for generations.  So there is a kind of learned ignorance that is also being developed at the same time in this process of transformation of consciousness. 

Also another very important aspect in terms of the effects of the socio-economic effects of this pesticide treadmill that is intensified, is the increasing inequality socio-economic equality that it is leading to.  Because a lot of the farmers find that they have to keep buying more and more dangerous stronger and stronger pesticides in order to curtail the various new kinds of pests that are being developed as the beneficiary pests are wiped out to the very strong inputs.

And often times these farmers go to their traders for their information.  So they get caught in a cycle of indebtedness to the traders and that also leads to increasing inequality of because it's increasing the poverty and powerlessness of the poor farmers.  See I'm talking about the small scale farmers because some of these technologies that are geared toward the large scale production are also being pushed towards small scale production so even I'm here dealing with farmers who have less than five acres.  Some of them have just a half an acre, but they're using very strong pesticides and insecticides often that have been developed to be used on large farms in other parts of the world.

According to the WHO reported about 750,000 cases of pesticide poisoning a year and 14,000 deaths are due to pesticide poisoning of which even according to the WHO 3/4 which take place in the third world.  Now the WHO also admits that these are really under estimates because good statistics are not kept in many of these countries.  And often times in cases of minor pesticide poisoning or long term consequences like cancer, the farmer themselves don't know that it is due to their exposure to pesticides, you know that they are developing these kinds of health problems. 

In one region that I visited in Sri Lanka, it obviously very high rates of birth defects and talking to some of the women who have these children with birth defects we found that, you know, they had sprayed their vegetable plots with various kinds of pesticides and they had not used proper application procedures certainly no protective gear and sometimes the labels may not even be in the languages or their own languages.  So, you know, they're extremely lack or totally absent guidelines in terms of using pesticides.

In Sri Lanka the use of pesticides had soared after 1977 and also the green revolution and increased external inputs -- use of external inputs like pesticides.  And this can be so-called economic equalization and opening up of the economy to export production and so why not expect that was industrialization of agriculture.

And you find that in the case of vegetable farmers, there is a tendency to spray even before pest appear as a precautionary measure and also there is a tendency to spray just before marketing.  So it seems that much of the vegetable and fruits if not ripe, etc. that is consumed in this particular country [inaudible] pesticide residues and there have really been no studies done on the extent of it or the socio-economic and health effects of it.

And in the study that I did for Care International, they have IPM, integrated pest management project and I was asked to a gender and development consultant, looking at the financial effects of IPM on men and women.  Again we found, you know, some of these problems.

Certainly indebtedness is increasing and in the late 1970's we found that debts due to poisoning was 104.5 per hundred thousand people and that's very high.  And there is also a lot of people who used pesticides for suicide which is really ironic because there's been cases of farmers drinking the pesticides that was brought to use on pest drinking it themselves because of inability to deal with their debts and other problems. 

So IPM program has been introduced by Care International to gradually get farmers to move into a more organic direction.  To bring down pesticide use to a minimum and also they're trying to introduce this to [inaudible] method calling farmer training.  That is sort of by demonstration and learning from each other rather than a sort of top down model which is what you know they had been imposed to in the last couple of decades.

And I was looking especially at the participation of women in this and we found that both men and women have taken to IPM extremely enthusiastically than they're educated on the dangers of pesticides for their communities, the environments, etc. they see that they don't want to use it at all and although the new method are actually the traditional methods like using name powder, [inaudible], you know composting, animal manure which their ancestors had been using any way, they find that now they're trying to return to that.  Although it is more labor intensive.  And also there's efforts to introduce a new kind of multi-purpose organic fertilizer pesticides called [inaudible] micro-organism which have been produced in Japan which is being made available to farmers in Sri Lanka and that is also being received very enthusiastically and the studies that have been done on the use of IPM program in Sri Lanka find that IPM actually have increased yields to farmers which is something they feared, that if they didn't use pesticide that their yield would be lower and that's not been the case.  In fact yields have been higher and also there's been substantial savings because they have not had to buy all these different kinds of pesticides.  Also they have been working more collectively.  And so those have been some of the really important findings.

And also for women it's been very important because by incorporating them in the IPM program, they felt that they are being recognized as farmers in their own right because traditionally the assumption is they only dependent housewives and their work in the field are really not considered work or farming.  So that's sort of improve their self-esteem and they get great enthusiasm on the part of women to move towards organic agriculture particularly because they obviously much greater concern about health and reproductive health hazards among the women. 

And some of the concerns that we've had

END OF SIDE 1

great access to greater income to the family, but does a woman really control it.  Particularly, given the fact that again and again women miss male as the head of the household even in cases where the men are not playing the primary bread winner role.  So that patriotical norm are they being affected by these kinds of intervention programs is what I have been trying to look at more deeply.

And the other issue there are many people working in the community development field and in particular in agriculture again and again through intervention programs actually end up increasing the workload of the woman.

Because now they have to do very labor intensive work like grinding certain kinds of [inaudible] and doing composting and gathering leaves and making pulp powder and you know all these different things and it is good but even a little bit of leisure time they had is now being taken up by these activities as well as collective savings schemes that also had been encouraged by the IPM program.  So, you know, there sort of no conclusive evidence here, but I'm trying to get Care to sort of develop a more gender aware approach to their programs at the outset rather than at the end of the project.

So I have introduced them to some gender awareness frameworks that have been developed by a whole school of thinkers over the last couple of years in terms of asking some basic questions about who does what, when and where.  Looking at the gender division of labor very closely and also access and control offer resources and who benefits.

And then I also want to mention that I've been also working on another program with the Sovordan movement in Sri Lanka.  Sovordan movement is considered the largest [inaudible] in the world.  Grassroots based village development program and they're stood at the forefront of organic agriculture change Sri Lanka.  They're the ones who are really producing and distributing in, which I mentioned before, I don't know too much about it, but I know this they're working, they're in production and distribution of that and they have been trying to get small loans for women to do organic agriculture on their household plots.  And in this program unlike the IPM program, there's no pesticides being used at all.  I mean that is one of the criteria for participation that you have to use only organic methods.  And its been in operation for only less than a year so it's very difficult to say the long term outcome, but certainly there is a lot of enthusiasm  and there are more and more women who want to participate in this program.  So we're trying to raise more money so that it can be spread among larger groups of women.

And what is very exciting about this program, it brings together a number of different interest like environmental protection as well as women's empowerment.  Because these are not really separate issues and there is a greater enthusiasm among women for this.  As you can see from women's environmental activitism around the world. 

So before I finish I want say that in addition to gender aware framework, it is very important to have a global political economic perspective on these issues.  I mean I started out talking about that because this is not just a Sri Lanka issue or an issue of the south or the third world, but it is a global issue.  So that means that in terms of regulating working toward greater accountability of trans-national corporations a lot of the work has to be done where these corporations are located.  And where consumers are stockholders, etc., have greater access to influencing them.  Because I still don't know whether there is any legislation in the United States against exporting hazardous pesticides that are banned in the U.S. into other countries.  I've been trying to get the information on this and perhaps somebody in the audience might be able to let me know later.  But certainly there should be uniform international regulations and standards rather than sort of a double kind of standards for different sets of people and regions.

Because what is happening in places like Sri Lanka is a form of slow genocide, particularly if you begin to look at the level of birth defects and reproductive health and other problems which have not even been looked at.  So I want to sort of end by saying that this is a global problem and a lot of the activitism needs to be global as well.  That there have to be connections between people who are working on the grassroots as well as people who are trying to move corporations toward greater accountability.  Market principles yes, like Paul Hawkins says, but I think it's extremely important when fused ethical, environment, social health criteria into policy making. 

Because without that, you know, we cannot really talk about organic agriculture and environment Sustainability of women's rights.  And I want to end by saying that I written a whole book called Women Population and Global Crisis.  It is not on organic agriculture per se, but trying to develop a very broad political economic perspective on linking the environment, women's health and economic issues.  And so I be delighted if you know if you would read my book and I'm doing a little book presentation and signing this evening at 7:00.  This is my PR, so if you are free, please come.  It's in the County room, but if not I also have some brochures which I would like to share with you.  So thank you very much.

[Applause]

Well that was really interesting and I'm going to get the book.  And I'm a die hard organic person, but I think the issues that she brought up are really important and I think that we as women have a right and a responsibility to look at those big issues and know that our action here affects the whole world. 

I just want to make a little comment about what she was saying about reproductive health and how the women are affected.  When the guy start to notice it there's be some action.  And I think the thing is it's much more obvious for women.  Some of the problems are the children have birth defects, we can't bear children.  It's not as obvious for guys.  A lot of our reproductive problems right now are because of the guys, but it's not just so obvious.  And I do think that really that when they start realizing it's shrinking, they're going to take action. 

I want to give just a little background sort of who I am.  I think there's a lot of people who come in the room since we were first introduced.  I'm not with the USDA, never have been, but I am delighted to know Kathy because we've made a nice connection last years and she has come out to the Midwest.

I am a certified organic cut flower farmer and I have a history of growing vegetables, but right now my only market crop is the cut fresh flowers.  In fact this morning, I was on my farm, went to my moms cause it was 6:30 in morning and the stores weren't open yet.  She drove me to the airport and she did my deliveries.  So it was great effort to get here.  I teased somebody when they told me about it, I said who would have a conference for ag in the middle of summer.  Aren't we all busy, but I'm really glad that I came and the gods were with me on it cause I was able to get a lot of good help to help take care of the farm work. 

Faye Jones and Morning Glory Farm is the name of my farm in Spring Valley, Wisconsin. That's where it's located.  My farm has been, I've owned my farm for about ten years and it's been certified organic probably for the last four.  Prior to that my market wasn't there.  I've been eighteen years involved in the organic agriculture movement, I like to call it. 

In addition to farming, I have four part-time jobs and farming is one of them.  But I'm very blessed because all of my other work is involved in agriculture.  I organize a large conference which I actually got to meet Kathy in person last year at in the Midwest called the Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference and we had a thousand people last year.  So it's really growing.  It was our ninth year.  Just to give you an idea about the growth of the industry, we had a thousand people.  When we had our first conference, we had 90.  That's really fast growth.  And they've been jumping two and three hundred every year.  And I just want to emphasize that this is an industry that is taking off and growing without government support, without university support, without technical or moral or personal support.  It's continuing to grow by leaps and bounds.  And that says something, I mean Kathy said we clear in countries like Sweden and other countries where they have a lot of support their numbers are growing very fast, but we're still doing it.  And I don't think that's going to change no matter what you do.

I also work for the Wisconsin OCIA chapter which is an organization that certifies farms.  I'm going to talk a little more about certification further on and I'm the treasurer for the Wisconsin Women's Sustainable Farming Network.  That's a volunteer job and then I am also work for a newsletter called Growing for Market which I'm sure I brought up here which is a fabulous resource for marketing small scale produce type thing.  This is it.  I have three samples up here.  The reason I brought it up is because she has an organic price list in the back.  She does this herself.  She calls restaurants, distributors, etc. and puts this together, the price list.  So I just wanted to mention that there is some sources to get organic price list stuff.

The organic industry as Kathy said is growing.  I have 25% a year as statistic on that and it was $4 billion in 1997. Those are big numbers again in light of you know that there hasn't been a lot of support for this.  I'm going to just go over certification because it's next on my list.

The first thing I tell the people when I'm going to talk about certification.  It's a marketing tool.  It's really is.  It's a marketing tool.  If you're doing direct marketing, you probably might not need certification.  If you are selling soybeans for an export market, you bet you do.  It's like anything else, you want drive a car, you got to have a driver's license.  You want to sell your product as organic, you need to be certified.  How else are assured that this is what we say.  I hear a lot small growers grumble about it, but I also feel as though I like the idea that everyone has to be certified.  Because then there some kind of accountability.  Otherwise, people just say they make up what organic is.  I use chemicals just when I have to.  And it isn't that way.  It is a very rigorous difficult hard process to get certified.  Once you're there, but for a lot of people there's a lot of loops that you have to jump through.

In this country there is over 20 certifying agencies right now.  45 thank you Nancy, I couldn't quote a number I didn't know.  And it my opinion that they're using similar standards.  That they are not that far off.  That the industry has been together on this one.  There is minor deviations, but everyone for the most part uses the same one. 

And this is to address the woman's question in the back who had a question about what'll you do in that transition period.  The organization I work for it's three years from any prohibited substance before you can be certified.  And what I've seen a lot of farmers do that are larger scale is that they's do the farm in pieces.  So you're not taking your big risk all at once and you're starting with a section, a logical section that would be easy to separate off from the rest of the farm.  Getting your skills developed, keeping your other stuff going where you know you have your steady income.  And then they just slowly bring the whole farm into production.  I mean a lot of people go cold turkey, but there is a lot of situations where that doesn't work.  So there is the option of transitioning here in this country we do let you have part of the farm certified as long as you have a farm plan for the rest of the farm that you're moving it into organic production.

So that's one possible way to handle it.  Again it's three years which is hard for some people and not hard for others.  And for a lot of people who are interested in this I say, set aside a piece of land that you don't use anything on so you have that available.  Other people might just do a little spot round up just to clean things and then they go oh no, I've lost three years on that land.  I think I'm going to come back to the process of certifications.  I'm going to see how time goes here and I can go over the process of certification.

Kathy spoke a little bit about this, but back in 1990, we passed a law saying that we were going to have federal standards and the USDA was given the job of writing these rules.  Now they didn't have to start from scratch.  This 45 certifying agencies, we've been doing it for a long time, I don't mean to sound  here, I'm trying not to. 

Ok, eight years later they got us some rules, Ok.  And they missed the mark so high we don't even know where they were coming from and it's pretty universally accepted that they've missed the mark.  Dan Glickman has already said we're going to redo them.  Now why did this happen is the big question.  But the good news is that two hundred thousand people wrote the USDA and said no way.  And I think this has been a great pulling together the industry.  I think it's really let the government know and other people know this is a big industry and we're a force to be reckoned with.  There is no question about it.  So I see it as a positive thing.  We have to wait till we see the next draft and see what happens.  Fortunately, we get to comment again.  I'm an optimist for sure, there's no question.  But I like to see how this has brought so many people together.  How it's made so many people aware of organic and what's happening.  I think it's given a lot more credibility to the force and the numbers that we are that wasn't there before. 

I don't know what other countries where they're at with this type of thing.  I know the EU has been trying to get a uniform standard and it's coming but slowly.  Again I wrote a note on here and I said I think the USDA was surprise at the response of the public. 

Some of the other things I sort of wanted to talk about here was the whole concept of regional food systems and the role that women play in that.  Because I really feel as though women in agriculture, the amount of women who want to be involved in agriculture is growing by big numbers.  But the focus for a lot of these women has been on local production and local selling.  And the idea of eating within regional food system and selling within your regional food system ties in to the issues that women face in being involved in agriculture and that there needs to be more connectiveness with that.  I think a lot of women don't even think about agriculture as a possible career option because it was never in their realm.  I remember when I was 19 and I wanted to work outside and I went to the university and went through other things, agriculture never even came up as a consideration, you know, forestry, that's great.  There's 4,000 people that graduate every year from forestry school and two jobs. 

And I heard Frances Morelapay speak and it occurred to me that I should try this and you know that was 18 years ago.  I now, you know, it probably took me eight years to feel like I was making money, had paid for my initial equipment investment and I felt like a farmer.  But I don't think it should have to be that way.  There was no resources, there was no tools.  And I think that that changing and I hope women here can go back and support other women to move into this.  We need to support our younger women in looking at agriculture as a very valued career option.  And again the concept of local systems.  Women are community builders.  It's in our nature, family, community it's all there.  I think that it ties very well.  I also think that more women involved in agriculture the more sustainable it's going to become.  Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my feeling and we need to really promote that.

I'm going to talk a little bit about marketing.  I just have some notes here.  Again the small scale agriculture is a really valid option for women.  We're good marketers.  We have that sense, we like interacting with people.  You know there's all kinds of options.  There's CSA which is community supported agriculture for those of you who are not familiar with it.  It actually came out of China or Japan and has now spread throughout the world.  You get people to pay you ahead time for produce that you deliver to them all summer.  They share the risk of crop failure with you.   This is something I know a number of women that have been able to take on a CSA and do that themselves and be very successful with it, just because of our nature of being able to communicate and be community builders.

Some of the resources that are available for marketing I showed you this one.  It's Growing for Market which is a newsletter.  She also has this book here.  It's Marketing your Produce and I can give you information about buying it.  This is a sample of probably 20 different farmers and how they're doing it all small scale.  That's my perspective; that's what I know more about.  It's a wonderful resource.  I think.  The thing about marketing is there is a lot of different ways you can go about it.  There's the CSA model, there's selling to stores, there's road side stands, there's restaurants, there's value added processing.  That all can be done on the farm.  And a lot of these things work very well with raising your children except one of 14 and all they want to do is be driven to town.  I have a teenager.  There's many options out there and I think we need to continue feel positive and to encourage other women. 

After my second marriage failed, I was feeling really disheartened about farming.  My husbands had never been involved in my farm operations and I was feeling financially stressed and lonely and whole lot of other things and I went to a group that had just formed in Wisconsin called the Wisconsin Women Sustainable Farming Network.  And I was so empowered at this meeting, I mean I was feeling lost, lonely and a whole lot of other things.  I went to this meeting and I left knowing that what I was going to do with my life.  That I was on the right track; that I needed to refocus, get some resources together and it was so empowering just to be with a group of women.  I became the treasurer of that organization since then.

But I think that informal support groups for women who are interested in ag is one of the best ways to lend that kind of support.  It's not a guy thing.  You know, these meetings we get together, they're very informal, a lot of it is just sharing and being inspired by other women.  And I want to encourage people to form informal networks just for women to talk about this stuff.  It empowered me at a time in my life when I might have gone back into you know nursing or some other career option.  You know instead of refocusing and so that was something Diane Kaufman here who is one of the founding women of that that made a big difference at a critical time in my life.  And now I feel like I have a lot to offer other women and so I would just encourage that as sometimes just get together and talk, its really important. 

I know one of the women, she saw our advertisement in the paper and she was real hesitant to come because she was afraid that we would be crocheting or tieing scarfs.  She was really worried and if you knew Gail Spect, you would know, but she came and she's come back ever since and she is a damno and so I think for a lot of women they have you know a need to be exposed to different information. 

I don't have my watch up here and I should.  Ok.  I'm doing just fine.  Some other marketing things.  You know I think that Kathy touched a little bit on this for a lot of people you know, larger scale grain production or other kinds of stuff is an option.  Soybeans get organic soybeans are incredible.  But you can only grow soybeans every third year.  If you're organic, you have to rotate. So you can't just have one crop.  You've got to be diversified.  You've got, you know, if it isn't hay or small grains or other things.  So I think depending on your situations, there's a really good market out there for grains.  Not even just for human consumptions, but the feed livestock feed is in really big demand right now.  Which his really nice, because if you've a poor, you end up with a really wet year and funky beans that can't be sold on a regular premium $21 a bushel, but they can still get a premium just for the feed quality.

[inaudible]

This is just someone in the audience who is saying that she isn't getting a real high premium for all of her grain crops.  So it can vary greatly the premium that you do get.  Well the nice thing about grains is that you don't have to sell them tomorrow.  If you have storage, I guess.  That's the advantage for me.

In this country there's a lot of groups working with grassroots organizations to try to help organic farmers and to also, the environmental movement is slowly coming together with the organic movement.  I say slowly because I don't understand why they weren't more together from the beginning.  But I see it happening more now.  There's groups like the Mississippi River Basin Alliance is one of their new priorities is to work with farmers for organic farming practices.  What we're doing I say here, because I'm in Wisconsin in my mind still. 

The agriculture practices in the northern part of the country greatly affect the southern part of the country and there's starting to be a lot more connectiveness with this.  Where I live other organizations you know would be the stewardship project, the Wisconsin Rural Development Center, a group called the Organic Trade Association, that works here in the United States to do promotional stuff.  They're not so much helping farmers, but they're doing promotional stuff.  There's a lot of organizations and a book, which I'm going to walk over and get which is really good broad based reference book.

And I'm going to leave these books up here afterwards, it's called the National Organic Directory and it's published out of California and I think it's just U.S.  I don't think this includes any European countries.  But this lists just about every organization, every group, every buyer that there is.  And it's a wonderful resource.  If there are people that are wanting to know more about what's happening at least in this country this is a great four pound maybe five pound resource right there that has lots of stuff. 

And again I see these groups striving and growing despite not having government, university or other support.  Once people know where to go to find information they're really excited.  I see a need for a lot more -- a lot of people don't know where to go.  So farmer or woman is interested in knowing more, it's very hard for her to connect.  But once she starts to get in the ripple, you find there's a lot of stuff.  But there is a big gap between somebody just interested and actually connecting and that why I think we all play a role in trying to let other women know what's available, how to take steps. 

I'm going to just talk a little bit about what is organic and I think most of the people in this room probably have a sense.  It's not about pesticide free.  We don't live in pesticide free world.  There is no such thing as pesticide free anymore.  Look we still find DDT like crazy.  And we haven't used it in this country, we export it to other countries. We still make it.  It's still happening all the time.  She brought up some really good points.  It's about a system of farming practices that seeks to build soil health.  That's my summary of it. 

Why people want to buy organic food .  They's say oh is pesticide free.  And they're just starting to more beyond that and realize it's because we care about the earth.  We care about how the land is taken care of.  We want to have a system that sustains itself for years to come.  It's a slow shift.  It's not about what you don't do.  It's not about not using chemicals.  It's a whole new system that includes many different things from cover cropping to natural soil amendments, to doing rotations that build the soil health, having a farm plan.  Stepping back and looking at how am I going to on a long term basis continue to build my soil.  And that's just my impression about what it is.

When someone says why are you an organic farmer?  I kind of stand there.  What's the right thing to do?  What other choice is there?  For me it wasn't premium, it wasn't a lot of other things, it just seem to me to be the way to do it.  No other choice.  Of course, I don't grow vegetables anymore, I grow flowers now.  That's because people pay a lot more money for flowers than vegetables.

You know being a good steward of the earth and I think promoting women and women organic farmers as stewards of the earth really would benefit all of us a whole lot.  I have a note here.  There are some university and government things starting to happen in fact.  Kathy I think she like me enough to take my teasing here.  Kathy didn't promote this, but she's got a stack of these for everybody here in this room.  And this is recent publications and current information sources except it's not so recent anymore.  They're going to making another one soon.  This is a nice little resource.  I would encourage you all to grab that, but in Minnesota the extension, the university extension published a book called Getting Certified.  I think that's the title of it.  It took them four years.  But it's a really nice book.  It's coming from a neutral angle.  They did quite a good job....

So that's really all I do have on my outline.  I think I do want to leave enough time for questions for people here, but I want to tell you just a little more about my farm.  What it looks like and where's it's at. 

I live in a very hilly area.  Just an hour from Minneapolis which means my market is an hour away which is just wonderful because I'm doing a product that's fresh.  And where you live is a big determination on what you grow and what your market is.  So I tell a lot of people don't become  don't think you're going to be a market gardener and live two hours from your market.  That's just not going to work for you.  For me the flowers work just swell.  I have a station wagon with air conditioning.  I can fit more stuff in my station wagon than I could in any truck I've ever owned.  It's a big wagon.

It's located in a really hilly area so I don't ever have any problem with drift or spray or a lot of other issues that farmers have to deal with.  It's a very scenic area and one of the things that I'm thinking of moving my farm into a road side stand type of sitting, bring your family out to the country.  I don't hesitate to charge premium prices for everything that I sell.  If someone says Oh that's kind of expensive for sweet corn.  Well you can go to town and get it.  That's fine.  I want three bucks a dozen and I don't think that's a great price, but they're selling it for two in town. 

I encourage people to not be to set your prices.  People can afford it, but you need to make a good living and don't ever turn back.  Don't look down.  We need to educate people that food we should pay the real cost of food.  If we don't pay the real cost of food in this country.  Even with organic we're still not paying the real true cost of food. 

But by us setting a price and saying this is what we need, pretty soon people can all come along.  I don't know I've been involved in farmers markets where there was a lot of undercutting always going on.  And it was not a good feeling.  There wasn't that this sense of comradory that you feel and I went to another market and if you are a new farmer at a market you immediately, they had this little group of people that came over to you and its sweet and as nice as they could, said we don't allow undercutting.  They use different words, but they let you know.  We're in this together, we keep our prices at a level and you can't come in and do anything.  But it was like, you were brought in.  You were welcomed, the hand was put out, it was a straight forward thing.

So there's lots of options for women.  And I want to encourage those of us here and I'm glad this is my first day.  I'm looking forward to gathering a lot of information and being able to bring this home, but I think we need to remember our connectiveness, all of us women and working together. 

I'm just going to go over a few of the books I have.  If anyone is interested in looking at this book overnight or whatever, just let me know and get it back to me later in the week.  Maybe you can hand them to me so I can stand here at the mike and then I'll stop.

These are just some resources.  This is called the Organic Field Crop Handbook.  It is out of Canada.  It's a wonderful book if you're doing grain, hay, cover crop, anything, its a great resource.  It's one of my jobs I sell resources and books out of my office and this one I sell a lot of.  These are just some free resources here.  This is a directory that I helped put together called the Upper Midwest Organic Resource Directory.  Everyday I was talking to farmers who wanted information and I was telling them about this organization or telling them that or it was so many stuff that this finally got put together.  Someone else did it fortunately.  And this is the kind of resource that small scale or large scale organic farmers need to have at their hands.  They need to know what organizations and what groups are doing what. 

This is one of my favorite books. It's called the Flower Farmer by Lynn Binsking (sic) and one of the things I like about the way Lynn writes and what she does is she is a hands on person, she's done it herself.  She can give you a broad based perspective.  A lot of the dos and don'ts and how to behave.  I have Organic Standards with me if anyone is interested, I'm happy to let this go.  I have lots of them at home.  This is the OCI International Standards right here.  When I'm talking to farmers I direct them to the materials list which is the back.  Right here.  No that's not a material list.  It's coming.  Well it's in here somewhere.

This is another book.  I'm from dairy land and this is the Organic Dairy Farming Book.  This is really good book for any livestock production.  There is not very much research out about or books or publications about livestock organic livestock production.  This is already a couple years old, but it's a good reference point. 

Thank you very much for letting me come.

[Applause]

I just wanted to hear your question about legislation for prohibited substances.  There was one a few years back it was called the circle of poisons and I think that that would be something that would be a good thing for us to resurrect that was part of the I believe I can't remember if it was 1990 or 1995 farm bill that would prohibit the export of pesticides that had been banned in this country to third world countries and that died.  But I think it would be a good one that we should bring back in this conference with women from a lot of different countries should resurrect that.

There just wasn't enough support for it.  And there's large big chemical companies.  there is a lot of money in that.  They had also said to us that these countries needed these chemicals and they didn't have the resources that we did.  But it came out a lot about the language barriers that some of the people indigent people were using them as water containers, these pesticides later on they used the chemicals and then use them as water containers.  So I think that would be a good thing that we could probably come out with something concrete from this conference.  And I also wanted to ask you Kathy, I served on the National Organic Standards Board and I know that when we were developing the recommendations for the organic program, that there was going to be -- there was a requirement that USDA do an economic analysis and obviously they really from what the proposed rules came out and how they read, they really hadn't updated their economic analysis since 1994 and the industry has changed dramatically to that point.

And I wanted to ask you what are their plans to update that information so that they can put together a proposed rule that is more realistic and suits the industry?  If you can give me a summary on the time line.

That's a great question.  My agency although it was not me, but my agency did do the economic analysis.  It was done on the rule.  And they did use old numbers and I know that my agency is not planning to be part of the economic analysis for the update.  So I'm not sure exactly how the ag marketing service is planning to do that.  I'm not sure that the plans are.  But I can tell you that one of my projects is to update the acreage numbers of the U.S.  And I've had that projects underway since the beginning of the year to get all the certifier data in the U.S. to try and say how much acreage we have under certified organic farming systems through 1997 and hopefully I can't make a promise on when it's going to be out.

Something very quickly, you know, even if legislation is there it's very difficult to enforce it and we see this in so many other areas, so it's also passing the legislation, but also having the frameworks and the mechanisms for enforcement globally that we would need to include any kind of joint proclamation if we could have one from this conference I think it would be fantastic.

Hi, my name is Susan Holten and I'm with Organic Growers in Michigan and I also have an organic farm, I'm also on the steering committee that has been appointed by the Organic Trade Association to develop a set of standards that we could take to the USDA and hopefully the NSLB and tell them that the industry itself in the United States has come together and so part of the reason I'm here is what I would specifically like every other nation's input on what you think those standards should look like and what your problems with having a worldwide set of standards would be.

The other thing I wanted to say was that in reference to the United States shipping out pesticides and that being a problem in other nations is that we really need to look at those chemical companies that have plants in other countries and that are also, it doesn't all come from the United States. 

[inaudible] it was a Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide so although increasingly there is local formulation you know sometimes joint ventures still they offer extension of trans- national corporations are even local companies that are following the example of the trans-national.  So its truly international issues are not trying to take the owners away from local companies or local governments.  And sometimes even agricultural departments of local governments who are in collodion with trans-national corporate interest. 

Hi my name is Susan [inaudible], I work with the Vermont Department of Agriculture and in Vermont we do try to promote organic and work very tightly with our organic certifier which is Nelson Vetermon and we try to do a very collaborative effort which we think is critical.  And what we do for transition is we create a revolving loan fund.  A lot of our transitioning farms are dairy farms and so you can't do the partial farm it's either you go organic dairy you go all the way and so what we do is try to help them through that transition with a revolving loan fund so they can get that premium check because that's what they're going to need, because that what their practices are demanding. 

I also wanted to announce that tonight there is going to be a group that is going to meeting at 7:00 so that we can start to make some resolutions and some recommendations international recommendation of what we need to do and I think that the topic that you brought up is one of many that need to be articulated and I feel that we cannot no longer can be silent, we have to have a voice for we have to come about identify what our policies are, what are our important issues, come to some sort of consensus and then articulate that as a conference here and am hoping people will be able to attend at 7 and tomorrow night again cause we think its critical.  And I know you got your book signing, but maybe afterwards we can pull that together.

And I have a question for the panel too and I guess I don't want to talk about USDA because we're very frustrated but it's not your fault, I understand.  I work for the state.  I know.

One thing we struggle with in Vermont is we don't want to be a part of producing food to feed the yuppies.  I feel that we're starting to create a two class food system.  One that is for the very wealthy and one that is for the very poor and we in Vermont don't necessarily want to transport all our good food down to New York to feed a bunch of wealthy people and what can we do, how do you deal with this problem emotionally and try to come to some resolve on that being involved in organic production.

Well in my area this issue keeps coming up because only a certain small group of people can shop at Bread and Circus, you know, that a local holistic food chain.  And that is why I wanted to get involve in [inaudible] agriculture you know among poor women and try to change both production and consumption in an our area where I have grassroots connections so, the equality issue is very critical one and I'm glad it was raised.  And I think that we have to take responsibility to seeing beyond our own personal food consumption.