The last organic latte

Organic coffee deep-sixed

Posted by Samuel Fromartz (Guest Contributor) at 1:39 PM on 05 Apr 2007

Read more about: food | agriculture | Department of Agriculture | organic food

Due a recent decision over at the USDA's National Organic Program, organic coffee, in the U.S. at least, may be a thing of the past. I wrote about this decision on Salon and did not shout it out to Gristies right away (mea culpa), but I am now.

The USDA decision, which affects the way small farmer cooperatives in the Third World are certified, will also dry up supplies of organic cocoa and curtail bananas. So eat your organic Dagoba bars now while they're still available.

It doesn't look like there's a solution right away, though a friend over at PCC -- in Grist's backyard of Seattle -- tells me the solution might be to build certification organizations in local markets. In the meantime, however, certifiers, coffee farmers and NGOs that work in the Third World are perplexed and upset.

I'll be updating over at Chews Wise blog and post any big moves here.

For story: The last organic latte
40 Comments | Post a Comment

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..

As a developmental economics issue, thats just absolutely criminal. Textbook definition of 'regulatory burden.'

Wouldn't be surprised, with this administration if it turned out to be a textbook definition of 'regulatory capture' too. This will surely benefit large plantation growers, as small farms go bankrupt because they have been legislated out of the market.

And increased size of large plantations leads to increased crop sizes which leads to mechanized crop planting and harvesting which leads to deteriorating current account balance as countries import expensive machinery (not to mention luxury items for the rich plantation owners to buy with all their money) just to prop up exports of cheap coffee. Large plantations and large crop sizes also lead to landless seasonal workers who are only needed during harvest times and are unemployed the rest of the year, which leads to increased income disparity in countries like Brazil that don't need it because when the extremely rich plantation owners get extremely richer and are surrounded by much poorer and poorer unemployed, well at a certain point the rich are so powerful and the poor are so powerless that it undermines Democracy and can even lead to Terrorism.

Thats what happens when you take the fair trade out of organic. You starve Democracy and feed Terrorism.

Oh who am I to talk, I buy Cafe Bustelo half the time anyways. But still. Thats terrible, I am very sad to hear that and I think it stinks to high heaven of someone corrupt somewhere making a deal.

by Mmimika at 3:50 PM on 05 Apr 2007

yes, it's odd

Given the USDA's historically lax attitude towards organic standards (GMO's are organic? Sure. Organic chicken feed is too expensive? Substitute regular. This is an organic dairy?), I thought it kind of odd that they came down so hard on the coffee growers. I've got no actual evidence of malfeasance, but it's awfully suspicious.

by GreenEngineer at 4:00 PM on 05 Apr 2007

Looks like the USDA just appointed 4 new guys...

... they who came into action in February to the standards board. From the timing, this would be their first or second decision.

Katrina Heinze of General Mills and Steve DeMuri of Campbells Soup stand out as, um, I don't know. The wrong resume for the job? The other two are from Stahlbush farms, whatever that is, and I forget.

It looks like the GM chick, Heinz, just got booted out of another 'organic' area of USDA. WTF.

This is such typical Bush administration crap. Somebody tell Talking Points Memo, get the Muckrakers on the case!!!

by Mmimika at 4:33 PM on 05 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

question for Samuel

The linked article suggests that "organic coffee" == "shade grown coffee".

Is that:

Always or usually true?
Required by the regulatory definition of organic coffee?
Required by the practical necessity of cultivating that particular crop without chemicals?

by GreenEngineer at 5:07 PM on 05 Apr 2007

Response

Mmimika, actually the effect may be increased immigration from Central America to the USA - or that's what a couple of coffee roasters mentioned. I also think this fits into the wider issue of access to developed world markets for farmers in the developing world - an issue that has undermined world trade talks.

GreenEngineer - The NOP actually might have done this because of widely voiced concerns of lax standards. It will effect a lot of product coming in from the developing world, and if you listen to some activists out there hammering away at untrustworthy imported organics, this may have been the result. This is just speculation on my part, however.

Mmimika. What you're looking at in your second post is the NOSB - National Organic Standards Board. This decision did not come from that body, which I think has integrity (at least, I haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe it does not). I first heard about this issue at the NOSB meeting last week in DC and the NOSB said they would begin looking into it. It was a surprise to them too, since it came straight from the NOP.

GreenEngineer. I am not a coffee expert, but roasters told me that organic is a higher bar environmentally and is usually shade grown. Whether that's 100 percent, I can't say - it probably depends on the bio-region. The converse is not true - not all shade grown is organic, either because the farmers use prohibited materials or just aren't certified.

The point is that many organic coffee farmers are organic by default - they follow traditional coffee growing methods of small scale production, heirloom varieties and probably could not afford to buy chemicals. Then, with the rise of organic in the developed world, they began to get a premium. Whether that remains the case with non-organic coffee in the future is hard to say. Organic has a far higher recognition than either shade grown or fair trade - which is also why 80 percent of fair trade is organic.

I'd be curious to hear what Starbucks has to say about this issue - so far I haven't seen anything or asked them.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 5:52 PM on 05 Apr 2007

ugh...

if you listen to some activists out there hammering away at untrustworthy imported organics, this may have been the result. This is just speculation on my part, however.

I just feel like Free Trade goes hand-in-hand with Organics. Its a healthy, self-sustaining system-dynamic that you can't legislate or certify into existence. I would even say that Fair Trade goes hand in hand with conservation efforts. Less close of a link, but still.

Neither national political party has been on the right side of access to markets issue, its irritating to think that organic activists might be more interested in red tape than in creating the incentives needed for healthy communities to emerge. Or maybe its hard to tell the difference from here, an even sadder thought.

Thanks for the correction about the NOSB/NOP thing. I was doing internet research, trying to spot the crony! Guess the whole citizen journalism thing is harder than it looks, huh.

Can't wait to hear what Starbuck's has to say. You're calling them, right? Just tell them it's Katrina Heinze's office, they'll put you right through... ; D

by Mmimika at 7:09 PM on 05 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

I don't know why she swallowed a fly

... perhaps she'll die.

Compare also this apocalyptic thing:
<<
A Man of Words and Not of Deeds

A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds
And when the weeds begin to grow
It's like a garden full of snow
And when the snow begins to fall
It's like a bird upon the wall
And when the bird away does fly
It's like an eagle in the sky
And when the sky begins to roar
It's like a lion at the door
And when the door begins to crack
It's like a stick across your back
And when your back begins to smart
It's like a penknife in your heart
And when your heart begins to bleed
You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.
>>

Those Brits are so clever ...

Back to coffee: Samuel Fromartz is correct to suggest that we must beware of mixing categories. This is a source of great frustration to me personally, and I suspect to many consumers of coffee.

I want to buy coffee that is "fair-trade," "shade-grown," "organic," and French-roast-style beans. So far, after a bit of shopping, I am not quite satisfied that I can do better than compromise. At present I am trying out Green Mountain. But their "shade-grown" variety does not include French roast!

The "organic" qualifier is in fact the least important of the four, to us. Nevertheless, we do not understand why we are having so much trouble finding all four categories in one single marketed coffee bean.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:50 PM on 05 Apr 2007

Shade Grown

GE, here's a good article that might answer some of your q's on shade grown coffee. As you see if you read the article, it depends on the shade. An older article in Fresh Cup explained this better, but I can't find it now. A key point: as in organic, a shade grown farmer can take a sort of band-aid (in organic we'd call it input-substitution) approach, or can be more holistic in her thinking and farm management. It also can depends a good deal on local ecology, of course, as to what is best for the farm and the soil. Leaving a few shade trees in doesn't necessarily do anything great, but many coffee farmers do a great job and go far beyond that.

I do agree that "untrustworthy imported organics" could/can be problematic (ask Bob Scowcroft of the Organic Farming Research Foundation about this), but dis-allowing these particular commodities is a ridiculous step. Why not take away certification rights for apples from China, or pears from Chile? Based on my knowledge of growing organic pears and apples, both of those crops require a lot of organic pesticides, and therefore seem as though they'd be more problematic than coffee. That is, since even organic orchard growers use (organically-allowed) pesticides anyway, it'd be easy for foreign, less-regulated growers to use non-organic ones.

Its as if USDA is trying to replicate its wholesale screwing of international farmers in the organic realm. This kind of thing drives me bonkers.

Interestingly, Fair Trade often does not go hand-in-hand with organic, but increasingly it does, I think, and ought to. Although, unfortunately, recent research on Fair Trade indicates that even Fair Trade Certification does not go far enough in terms of raising prices high enough to pay farmers a wage that takes care of all their livelihood needs. And that research is one of the many data sets upon which I base my belief that purely market-based solutions will not solve the world's farming (or other, for that matter) problems. But that's another soapbox.

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 12:05 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Another point

Stephanie, the NOP did not disallow commodities, rather it disallowed a certification method that was prevalent in the production of certain crops. This may also effect grower groups in China that were formed out of collective farms of the communist era, but we're still on the very early tip of reporting this story. My sense is that the implications are large, but I'm less sure how it will play out.

On the one hand, rigorous certification should be a given. But the higher policy aim should be to achieve that rigor without destroying market access. It's a balance that I think the prior system, despite its imperfections, was trying to achieve.

We're also getting a lot of talk that organics is not a rigorous system. I think it is highly rigorous and transparent, which is why a lot of farmers would rather not reach for it - even those who are so-called "beyond organic." They want to do their own thing without a lot of oversight, because it's "better." The only problem is that people buying their food don't really know how to evaluate their systems. That type of evaluation - by a 3rd party - was the reason organic certication was invented. Despite its problems, I can't think of another with as high and comprehensive a bar currently.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 6:49 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Understood

Gotcha, Samuel. Good point.

I, too, believe organic is a rigorous system. It is important to note that it pretty much only addresses one aspect of farm production, and that is methods of farming. Many people find this problematic, but I am not suggesting that food that is USDA Certified Organic is in any way not rigorously certified or held to a high-quality standard. It may sometimes be characterized as such, but I think the reasons for that are far more complicated than the actual fact that it is not rigorous.

To me, what many people involved in organic are talking about when they talk about "beyond organic," is not about how their methods of production are necessarily better than that of USDA Organic, (although some do) but how their farm does not fit in the certified organic marketing niche, either because certification is too expensive for them (particularly in CO and VA), or they sell directly (in which case the proxy is not needed), or because simply offering one different option on how food is created in this country was not, actually, the point of the organic movement.

Many of the organic movement's originals activists will say that their whole point was to change farming as we knew it. Which is why, actually, I think the current debate and talk about organic selling out is a bit of a non-starter. Certified organic production, as Tom noted, still only applies to a miniscule amount of the farmland in the U.S.

One way of seeing organic is as just another niche market. And if one sees organic as having become just another option, the worry is the movement's critique of industrial agriculture has been subsumed by its market success. So no longer are we talking about what is wrong with 99% of the corn we grow, since, if we so choose, we can buy an organic tortilla. This removes the moral aspect from the organic argument, since our country is no longer having a conversation about whether or not it is right to grow 98% of our food in the way we currently grow it. Now that, if one chooses, one can go buy organic, I worry that this may mean organic becomes just another market slot. End of conversation. And that is why market-based solutions do not solve our problems. Because (as discussed a bit here) we can't always have morals-based conversations simply by voting with our dollars.

But on a hopeful note, organic activists and farmers are some of the most thoughtful and innovative people I know, and they are talking about all of this this and reflecting on the status of organic on a daily basis. The conversation did not end in 2002, and they do not (generally) perceive themselves as having "won" when the final rule was published. They keep on thinking and moving and acting. Which I find very promising and incredibly resilient, because that reflectivity will help them in achieving their long term goal: re-creating US agriculture.

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 7:56 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

what to do?

So, should we be writing letters to someone? Is there something we can do to make this suck less? Maybe find a way for there to be a funding increase such that certification will remain as affordable as previously despite increased inspections?

by willa at 8:38 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Metal McDonalds

I suggest that Gristers move from organic food to a purely inorganic diet. Imagine a fine latte made of molybendium. Or a steak, composed of tin.

Surely the environment would heal because of a commitment to inorganic foods and beverages.

by jabailo at 8:42 AM on 06 Apr 2007

markets and transparency

Interestingly, Fair Trade often does not go hand-in-hand with organic, but increasingly it does, I think, and ought to.

Love to hear more about it - if you have any links, or the opportunity to post, I'd be interested. I think the two are intrinsically related in developing economies, and if in fact they are not, in a way that breaks the model, thats something I'd want to read up on.

Although, unfortunately, recent research on Fair Trade indicates that even Fair Trade Certification does not go far enough in terms of raising prices high enough to pay farmers a wage that takes care of all their livelihood needs. And that research is one of the many data sets upon which I base my belief that purely market-based solutions will not solve the world's farming (or other, for that matter) problems. But that's another soapbox.

So.. are you saying that you are frustrated with the limitations of these kinds of certification programs? I see them as being rudimentary transparency initiatives - creating a communication between consumer and producer beyond the actual product. As such, they can never be any more than part of a market-based solution. Or maybe you define them differently.

All that to say, I found your post interesting.

by Mmimika at 9:10 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Mmimika

Sure. I've got a lot of articles to edit today, and a paper to start writing, but will try, sometime, to get around to posting on Fair Trade. The stuff I have is academic and therefore not link-able (since subscriptions are needed.) If you email me I could send you a pdf or two.

I am not actually frustrated with the limitations of these programs, because I think they are necessarily limited by their very nature. What frustrates me is the idea that "Organic" or "Fair Trade" labeling programs will actually effect structural change or that it is enough to simply have them as an option. In my experience, putting things in the marketplace (commodifying them) hides a lot of the social/ethical practices and discussion around them (that's a bit Marxist but I think true), and I find this concerning if, in fact, putting things in the market is seen as an end goal, or a way that we hope farmers (either here or in other nations) will actually be able to make a living in a way that is healthy for them and the earth.

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 9:23 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Right

Stephanie, your post is right on the mark and essentially what my entire book is about.

One point I would make is that the organic market is not monolithic - people buy for various reasons. I think of it as a green spectrum, since it offers an entry point for very light green consumers but it also serves the needs of darker green consumers concerned about other things, like fair trade.

The point is to keep the spectrum bright - dynamic - so people can move down it and get more informed. This is essentially what happened with Fair Trade Coffee twining with Organic certification. In other words, I don't think the process - or conversation - is static. Or it need not be so.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 9:29 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Plus

Markets are a great way to begin conversations, as long as they don't end there. That's what I fear is happening with green consumption - it's becoming an ad category, very trendy, but does it go beyond buying an efficient light bulb at Wal-Mart?

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 9:34 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Sam,

Nice to know that I understood your book. I enjoyed reading it. :-)

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 9:35 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

If the NOP requires this of ag co-ops, then...

Sam,

I'm curious if the NOP's ruling also requires multi-site corporate operations to get each, individual store/farm inspected in order to be certified organic, too. This is not currently the case. When Whole Foods trumpeted that they were now the first national chain to be certified organic, I called the local WF to say congrats, but the person who answered the phone argued with me. She was all, "No, retailers can't even be certified organic..."

Mmimika, there's nothing in the National Organic Program requiring Fair Trade premiums to growers. Fair Trade and organic standards are completely separate entities - and, at times, they're even at odds. In fact, in order to get the national organic standards passed, the organic movement had to jettison social justice standards (living wage, health insurance, working conditions, etc) in order to keep the coalition together. An organic migrant worker isn't required to make more than a conventional one.

For more on this you may want to read about the burgeoning Domestic Fair Trade movement:

http://www.equalexchange.com/what-is-domestic-fair-trade

http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/index.php?id=6 ...

by barthanderson at 9:36 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Contact info

to comment on this issue:

Mark Bradley
Associate Deputy Administrator
USDA-AMS-TMP-NOP
Room 4008-South Building
1400 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20250-0020
Telephone: (202) 720-3252
Fax: (202) 205-7808
Email: Mark.Bradley[at]usda.gov

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 9:38 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Certification

Barth, as I understand it, WF was certifying their stores using the grower group method. Now each store will need to be inspected, but yes, retailers are not required to be certified to sell organic food, nor are restaurants - but some choose to certify anyway as a way to raise the bar.

Yes, too, on multi-site organic farming corporations if each site has a separate farm plan - but no, if there are, say, multiple fields on one farm. Each and every field does not have to be inspected - it's up to inspector, as I understand it.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 9:42 AM on 06 Apr 2007

Work at the international level

Folks, some of the issues you all raise have been discussed at the international level for several years, leading to the creation of the International Task Force on Harmonisation and Equivalence in Organic Agriculture, spearheaded by UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN) and IFOAM (the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements).

The objective of the Task Force is to facilitate international trade and access of developing countries to international markets.

Their website is rather boring, but there is lots of good material to be found there.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 10:03 AM on 06 Apr 2007

sliding scale organics?

>WF was certifying their stores using the grower group method.

Yep. They had their overall handling plan certified, not all eight zillion stores.

I have mixed feelings about this ruling. On one hand, yeah, I think farms should all be certified if they make an organic claim, but, on the other, couldn't small, 1-3 acre farms get an exemption akin to the "below $5K in sales" exemption, currently in effect? Particularly those tiny farms in far more devastated economies than America's?

(This ruling will affect a big chunk of the organic banana market, too, come to think of it).

by barthanderson at 10:06 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

question for Samuel and Stephanie

Although organic agriculture is still only a small percentage of the total, my sense is that it is on the verge of taking off and really entering the mainstream (e.g. Walmart, CostCo).

While organic's roots are with the sustainable agriculture movement, it's current legal definition essentially means farming without inputs of synthetic chemicals, fertilizers, or antibiotics. My perspective is that, while that limited definition is very far from being "sustainable", it's an immense improvement over current practice. That being the case, I think the cause of sustainable agriculture might be best served by a two-pronged approach:

Accept that "organic" != "sustainable" agriculture, but that it's far better than conventional ag. Defend the current standards from dilution while encouraging the mainstreaming of that sort of ag practice. Stop trying to force "organic" to be a much higher standard than it currently is (that is, fight to maintain its integrity, but don't try to make it something it's not).
Develop a new term and a new standard that looks at sustainable agriculture from a much broader perspective, explicitly including soil, water and energy conservation, social justice issues, and possibly localism as well. That then becomes the fringe-edgy-foodie-radical standard that organic was, back when it was first getting going.

The long-term strategy, of course, is the encourage this new standard to become more widely adopted until it can also be mainstreamed much as organic is today.

I don't think there's any way that our agricultural system is going to make the leap straight from current practice to true sustainability. But if organic becomes the new conventional, and truly sustainable farming becomes the new organic, that looks to me like a potential path to a real sustainable ag system over the long term.

by GreenEngineer at 10:25 AM on 06 Apr 2007

third world organics

Barth, thanks for the links. To be clear, I was talking about small farmers in the developing world. Highly diversified economies and especially the US economy is another ball of wax.

Stephanie, I've got academic journal access galore so shoot!

by Mmimika at 11:18 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Taken straight from my bibliography:

Here are three articles on Fair Trade/Organic.

Two were published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies (A thematic/special issue. Much to be found in this issue) Getz/Shreck is the one I referred to most specifically in my post:

Getz, C and Aimee Shreck. 2006. What Organic and Fair Trade labels do not tell us: towards a place-based understanding of certification. International Journal of Consumer Studies 30(5) 430-501.

Lyon, S. 2006. Evaluating fair trade consumption: politics, defetishization, and producer participation. International Journal of Consumer Studies. International Journal of Consumer Studies 30(5): 452-464.

Ag and Human Values (a GREAT journal)

Raynolds, L., 2000. Re-embedding global agriculture: the international organic and fair trade movements. Agriculture and Human Values 17, 297-309.

I've actually contacted a couple of these authors to see if they have comments on this USDA ruling. We'll see if they answer (it is Good Friday, y'all.)

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 11:47 AM on 06 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Response

1. Accept that "organic" != "sustainable" agriculture, but that it's far better than conventional ag. Defend the current standards from dilution while encouraging the mainstreaming of that sort of ag practice. Stop trying to force "organic" to be a much higher standard than it currently is (that is, fight to maintain its integrity, but don't try to make it something it's not).

Well, lots of people in organic world feel that the standards should always be improved, to reach a higher bar. That's currently underway with tightening up access to pasture for dairy cows so that cows are actually out on grass.

So I think both things need to happen, fighting for integrity but raising the bar. But yes, this focuses on method rather than other issues like social justice. I don't think that will change.

2. Develop a new term and a new standard that looks at sustainable agriculture from a much broader perspective, explicitly including soil, water and energy conservation, social justice issues, and possibly localism as well. That then becomes the fringe-edgy-foodie-radical standard that organic was, back when it was first getting going.

Some would argue that organic is all about soil, water and energy conservation, simply because the methods are about improving the soil and take less water and energy.

Other labels are coming, but the problem with labels is recognition. People aren't aware of them and don't know what they mean. Organic now after three decades is finally getting broad awareness. It would be ambitious to start that with something else, but I expect it in labor standards, humane animal treatment and local (which has the highest awareness outside of organic).

Another interesting thing about local - people are now beginning to ask, "what is local?", in the same way they asked years ago about organic. I wouldn't be surprised to see this defined, beginning the long slog to standards that organic ended up with...

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 12:51 PM on 06 Apr 2007

Fair Trade

Is the USDA's decision an opportunity for Fair Trade certifiers? Seems like they could add a "sustainable" category that could essential replicate organic standards,

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 3:05 PM on 07 Apr 2007

great discussion

I'm glad that people here are decrying the lack of opportunity for developing country farmers in our developed country markets and not jumping on the "if it's not local so it's not 'sustainable'" bandwagon, which I heartily reject.

One slight point of disagreement- I don't think the organic standards are all that good or rigorous- the certification is relatively weak with no surprise visits and consistent testing of any sort- and the rules themselves allow for plenty of environmentally unfriendly practices- the rules for animal agriculture are particularly lax. This is from someone who buys 95% organic.

J.S.

We need to focus on the root causes of problems. www.voicesofreason.info.

by Jason D Scorse at 9:15 PM on 08 Apr 2007

Wow

I don't think I have ever learned more from a comment string, with many thanks to Samuel's respones. If I can add one question: no-one has touched on any agro-business/fertilizer/pesticide lobbying on the issue. It seems to me that all of those affected by the ruling have been taking money away from the commercial farmers buying GM crops and the specialized pesticide/fertilizer soups U.S. companies sell to developing countries. Why can't we fine/de-list the co-ops that don't pass inspection? I would like to believe that organic produce I buy hasn't been crossed with GM crops, but shouldn't we start testing that as well if costs apparently aren't part of regulatory decision making? Do we really need more labels?

by jwebb at 1:16 PM on 09 Apr 2007

Sign the Petition

I have created a petition on this issue:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/501659372

Please look it over, and sign it if you like.
Yes, I stole some information from Grist... thank you for putting it out there for us! :)

by raevynn at 1:56 PM on 09 Apr 2007

<<dagoba chocolate?!?!

it's my first post, and it's late, i guess i got my mail late, but i thought i'd break with an opening query/jab at the host Mr. Fromartz, and was just on a chocolate-savvy site saying dagoba was bought by hersheys a coupla years ago, and they havent been so forthcoming about the ol' child labor issues at hand (while still eking out the organic brand name) (: http://www.laborrights.org/projects/childlab/VDayChocolat ... :)

----->back to the fryingpan, tho,
-------------------------------->>so if i get this right, now, it seems that USDA is going to become more strict about their certs, and this cost will be passed down to...passed down to...passed down to only the poor farmers? wasnt the whole reason that organic products are so expensive because the methods themselves are so much more expensive?

one of my friends is actually attempting to vet honduran farmers for the usa coffee market, and i'm sure that there are many others attempting to bring their savvy down to the small previously-group-certified farms. what is preventing these same farmers from passing down the cost to us?

i understand that the larger companies will cope with this situation and the fees incurred all the much more readily with that look of less competition in their eye, but isnt this one of those cases where we actually do have to show our allegiances with our $$? where buying organic, from a small farmer in honduras is not just "buying green" or "greenwashing" or any of that but throwing down some of your own personal budget to help sustain these practices that you know and hold and believe in dearly, and since when was earth justice not social justice? i never believed that for a second!

whattabout workers not having to be covered in chemicals - or the local aquifers?

if what i gather from this gristgrind here is true, then the certs. are still within their glory-be parameters, and havent been eroded yet. (thats my main fear, that the ag. lobby will get the best of the standards and dilute everything, well, as they well, yes, as j. scorse already pointed out, in some cases, become a bit fudgy).

there have to be more labels out there - if you cant sell small-farm coffee in the states b/c theres no rubberstamp then clearly the commodification has already come gone dithered and withered. --but-- if what this does is expose a whole host of scam-artist organics around the world and even in our own borders, and like scorse points out, you start having inspectors drop-in like the d.o.h. reps do in restaurants, then we actually have firmed up integrity. and i gotta say thats what i want. then we have rubberstamping that means something. to me it means that i am paying compensation for more arduous and gaia-saving farming techniques. accountability is the name of the game. and when something is just starting off, i dont care if they did use the same technique for their farm for the last billion years, i want to know that they havent changed. you cant hold a larger corp. to those standards, or gripe about how they're not, and then not hold the little guys to the fire to harden'm for battle too.

because frankly i dont trust organic franks further than they go in my ear. except the ones from ive been to their farm and met the farmer and talked about how jimineys been doing etc etc.

also: other labels. check out the "salmon-safe" label: they certify (get this) not only farms, vineyards, and park services, but they certified PSU as a "salmon-safe campus", same with the nike hq (but not their factories...) and a toyota factory: just certified "salmon-safe!". maybe im uninformed and naive and sleeplesslyblind and the cert. means nothing except that its a shell-game-con-maNGOc3 set up by nike, toyota and PSU, but i recently got some bainbridge island wine, the noir as it were, which happens to be "salmon-safe" - the first vineyard in washington to get the cert - and i drank it real, real, real slow because i knew they never irrigated, they never pesticided, they never took well water, and it ain't no big fancy farm with tractors all over it (theyve got a coupla loverly horses tho) and i happened to be on bainbridge at the time - and it was exorbitantly expensive. perhaps what we need to address is not the price we are paying, but what we satisfy inside?

(ps: the liberal peppering of rhetorical questions i hope exposes me as someone still thinking its all quicksand of my own thinking without flailing only singing)

by geronimo domino at 12:09 PM on 10 Apr 2007

perhaps what we need to address ...

is not the price we are paying, but what we are willing to pay for such beautiful ideals...

(and they only make us pay $ymbols!)

by geronimo domino at 12:12 PM on 10 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

"franks in my ear"

Oh baby, whatever orifice works for you ...

Geronimo sweetheart, I ought to be savage, and tear you apart, regarding your shameless neglect of those two keys on either side of the keyboard, labeled "Shift," and usually marked with cheery upward-pointing arrows, to say nothing of all those spelling eccentricities. But in your case, since you write so beautifully, I want you just to keep writing, more and more, however the hell you want to.

("Thinking it's all quicksand, without flailing, only singing," is unspeakably magnificent. I envy you, como un tigre. Quiero comer tu corazon.)

Somewhat less franticly, I might observe that Mr. Fromartz does very well to point out that the "organic market is not monolithic." Indeed, the organic market includes people who do not necessarily think that "organic" is the only important epithet. As I wrote earlier, "shade-grown" matters a great deal to those coffee-drinkers among us who are considering the migratory birds. Thanks to Stephanie, for a link to an article on the subject.

I wonder why the Rainforest Alliance's certification has not entered into the discussion thus far. Consider:

http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/marketplace/index.html ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 12:42 PM on 10 Apr 2007

Geronimo..

Your profile compares a factory farm to a concentration camp.

A rather provocative statement. Are you here to get a reaction from people?

by Mmimika at 12:52 PM on 10 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Geronimo!

I had to go to his profile after Mmimika's post- whoa! But my reaction was that I liked it (especially having taken many a Tour de Stench of confined animal feeding operations). And, Canis,I thought you were not a meat eater ("quiero comer tu corazon")?... even if it is shade grown, fair trade, organic, and free range? By the way, Canis, did you see the link to the PB&J website from a previous Gristmill post- it says eating 16 PB&J sandwiches saves the life of one chicken! An odd perspective but somehow appealing.
Those last lines of Geronimo's were lovely indeed....

An ounce of practice is worth twenty thousand tons of big talk. -Vivekananda

by karenc at 1:49 PM on 10 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

"Tour de Stench"

Karen C, you are right, it is not often that my pre-Columbian Mesoamerican persona takes over. My bad!

I do not remember much of anything, and I am afraid I do not remember the PB&J site. The low IQ has been an obstacle always. Please remind me, it sounds very interesting.

Saving chickens is very very worthwhile. I do indeed love chickens. And I suppose eating sixteen sandwiches is not a too difficult ransom to pay. But surely we can do better than that, no?

Kaela, aka kmp, has not often joined us lately, to my great sorrow. She might be interested in this animal welfare cause, not too far from her:

http://network.bestfriends.org/petsalive/news/

To Mimi: We are all here to get a reaction, let us be frank (so to speak). But I have learned to be tough. I have lost my heart too often to beautiful Gristmill transients. There I am, at the door, at 6ish AM, saying silly things, like, "Remember, you said you'll call ... ," as he strides off, manfully, into the morning dew. And does he call? Ha.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 5:50 AM on 11 Apr 2007

candis

Hmm, What Would Genet Do? - admire the tasty little scamps, of course. Not me... I guess it gets back to the issue of the flaneur. I can appreciate the object lesson about the tenuous nature of our discourse. But once that point has been made, I am a traditionalist. Sidewalks are for walking from point A to point B, not navel gazing.

In Samoa these crabs would get the bucket: a good, crippling, third world hiding and then off to uncle Fasilo Palagimuli's village to spend a year picking poisonous starfish off the reef.

One last off topic post - did you see the Joshua Bell article in WaPo this week? Now thats a tasty non-sequitur we can all lose the plot for...

by Mmimika at 9:50 AM on 11 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

"only in DC"?

Remind me again, who was Genet? Citizen Genet? Jean Genet, famous homosexual, associated with the thea^tre de l'absurde? Sorry, I miss the connexion to anything else.

Ditto, with navel-gazing.

Ditto, with Samoan crabs.

Ditto, with poisonous starfish, though that does indeed interest me.

As for Joshua Bell, thanks for the WaPo article. I had seen it in brief on, I think, ABC News. He is a good-looking young man, and he was playing a great instrument, apparently, and he knows how to play such an instrument very very well, and he was playing very fine music, in an acoustically happy place, I guess.

But again, I am not sure what your point is.

That he did not make very much money, in spite of his good looks and his artistic brilliance? Well, OK, that is sad, but hardly unexpected, given that the people passing by all (or mostly) had places to go to.

So I remain confused, by your last message.

By the way, not that it matters, you are misspelling my name. Perhaps you are doing it intentionally. I do not especially care. But it should be on the record, in any case.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 10:57 AM on 11 Apr 2007

caniscandida

Sorry. Not intentional. Caniscandida. Canis. Candida. Got it. Do you have a preferred nickname?

Genet the playwright, who delighted in thieves and liars and scallywags and - one would assume - today's internet scamps who enter an online space seeking to reveal it as a theatre de l'absurd, undermining the socially constructed basis of conversation by posting specious arguments, spouting jibberish, inventing facts, changing their name, making inflammatory claims, pretending to be functionally autistic, etc. etc.

I am not entirely sure what the point of mentioning the WaPo article was either. I was just musing that, if one is going to have ones public space taken over, by a troll or otherwise, ideally it would be by as handsome and accomplished a distraction as Joshua Bell. Whether he might have made more money or had a bigger audience I think is beside the point - given the news coverage of the event, and the number of times the video has been watched, seems silly to complain that nobody stopped to listen.

I really must apologize, I have gone completely meta. I will endeavor to speak only about chickens and starfish from now on.

by Mmimika at 11:49 AM on 11 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

NOSB

Are you kidding me????

Demuri has the handling spot... and that's what he is, a handler. He's been in the organic industry 15+ years. he's the only one on that board right now WITH the resume for his seat. If he was given the environmentalist spot, like Hieney, then you would have a point. That was a crock. General Mills... er... GM... as in GMO....

peaceout

MeLuvOrg

by MeluvOrg at 4:12 PM on 20 Aug 2008
[ Parent ]

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