>>>Buying Organics >>>National Organic Coalition
An historic struggle is currently raging in this country over the future of food in the 21st century. A grassroots movement for organic, ecological and humane food is now challenging the decades-long dominance of “industrial” corporate-controlled agribusiness. While industrial agriculture still dominates our crop fields and supermarkets, organic agriculture is now expanding faster than any other sector in U.S. food production. It is now a $9 billion industry growing at 20 percent per year. Moreover, thousands of farmers and producers are even pushing beyond organic to establish food production systems that are locally based, humane, and socially just and that encourage biodiversity.
Despite organic agriculture’s positive growth, it has reached a critical juncture in its struggle for a more sustainable food future. On October 21, 2002, national organic standards became law. While these standards are worthy of celebration, they are not the final word in the protection and promotion of organic food systems.
Unfortunately, the future of organic food is in the hands of an Administration and a regulatory agency–the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)–that are backed by powerful agribusiness interests, all of which are openly hostile to the organic and beyond alternative. In less than a year from passage, the Bush administration has sought to seriously undermine the national organic standards in a number of significant ways, including creating numerous potential loopholes that would allow placing unacceptable chemical materials on a list of substances approved for organic use; a number of unapproved additives to be used in processing organic foods; eliminating outdoor access requirements for poultry; eliminating the requirement that livestock feed be 100 percent organic; and forcing small-scale, farmer-based organic certifiers out of the program. If the Bush administration’s current policies are continued, the integrity of all organic food could be fatally compromised, and this crucial alternative to industrial agriculture would be lost.
CFS seeks to maintain strong organic standards that live up to the quality and integrity that consumers expect from organic foods while evolving the ethic by promoting agriculture that is local, small-scale and family operated, biologically diverse, humane, and socially just. The ultimate goal of the Organic & Beyond campaign is to replace the industrial agriculture model with a new vision of farming with the natural world.
Organic & Beyond!!! i am a flag waiver for this and will help by supporting my local small farmer markets!
The industrial agriculture has to GO!
We cannot let corporate interests weaken organic for their own benefit . Just as importantly, simply taking the current (broken) conventional agricultural model and substituting organic inputs is not optimal, leaving many critical issues unaddressed (ie: you can feed your cow organic corn and soy, but this says nothing of the conditions in which it is kept and the fact remains that cows should not be eating corn and soy in the first place!).
On that note, what is this organization’s position on biodynamic agriculture and similar alternatives that address the whole ecological picture?
This talks about the Bush administration and no doubt they have their fault in this but I’d like to know what the Obama administration is doing about it. I would be very surprised if anything changes. It is, after all, the political machine of the government that controls everything.