Last month, I tackled the thorny issue of confusing claims on food labels. I stated that without written definitions of standards, the buyer is relying totally on the honesty of the person or company making the claim. Of the many descriptors indicating how meat is produced, only “organic” has achieved the status of a legally recognized claim. Since I was intimately involved in the process I will spend some time in this article reflecting on the history, with a view to better understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the system as it exists today.
I was a young man running a small mixed farm in partnership with my Dad in 1982 when I first thought seriously about organics. Christine and I had two small children; we were young, idealistic, spiritually awake and dedicated to doing the best we could in every facet of life. We were launched into farming and family life straight out of high school, and wanted to learn, to improve – to do better at everything than those who went before us. On the farm, this meant exploring the latest ways to get more bushels of corn per acre and more milk from every cow. I was into farm meetings, seminars and publications which all aimed at intensifying production techniques with the aid of inputs from off the farm. We had won an award for the greatest increase in milk production the previous year and were on our way to becoming the model, progressive farm.
“In living nature, nothing is disconnected from the whole.”
Ted Zettel
That was when I met my first real organic farmer and started to study the science behind this radical “new” approach to farming. I became aware of life in the soil, a foundational concept around which alternative methods of fertilization, weed control, composting, and tillage revolved. I was intrigued. I did more reading, met more people who were practicing these methods and saw that they worked. What appealed most was the very core of the proposition; that everything is connected; that each area of management affects all the others; the “wholistic” approach. What a stark contrast from those Ministry of Agriculture “Factsheets” I had been consuming, which treated every problem in isolation. “Got weeds? We got herbicides. Got disease? We got vaccines and antibiotics. Got Nitrogen deficiency in soil? We got anhydrous ammonia” It dawned on me that the way I had been farming contradicted my faith in a Creator who made everything and “saw that it was good”. Now I was hooked. “In living nature nothing is disconnected from the whole” became my motto. I had been following a reductionist theory where each area of management was analyzed and difficulties resolved as if unrelated to all the others. My new perception of the role of “farmer” was as steward of a living, interconnected ecosystem
I write this short account of my own conversion, as background to understanding what came later, especially in regard to organic certification, the writing of Standards of Production, and the eventual enshrinement of those standards under the Canadian Organic Regime. In the beginning we were all idealists. There were no premiums for organic goods except for a few exports of grain to Europe. Milk, eggs and meat from organic farms went into the pool along with all the others. The supermarkets had no organic offerings. The typical convert from conventional farming was, like myself, motivated by a conviction that what we had been doing defied reason and that if we cooperated with the good science of building soil health we would eventually be rewarded with better yields, healthier animals, and we would supply the people with better food.
Mixed in with our reform-minded idealism was awareness of the other evils of the industrial global food system beyond the farm; overprocessing, overpackaging, additives, preservatives, shipping across continents, exploitation of the natural resources for corporate gain, concentration of land ownership and the seemingly willful eradication of the small farm by governments and academia and their collusion with the pharmaceutical and ag-chemical companies.
Looking back, I can see that we were way ahead of the curve; bona fide conspiracy theorists before there even was such a term!
Our first experience with organic certification was in 1986 when we applied with the newly formed Ontario Chapter of the Organic Crop Improvement Association. Production standards had been written just a few years earlier, and were incomplete, with no guidance on most livestock issues. The process relied heavily on peer review. A committee of volunteers, all farmers who themselves were organic, would review each application along with an inspector’s report and give or withhold approval. The head office of OCIA international was in Lincoln Nebraska, and this became a bone of contention for us here in Canada, who were expected to help finance the larger project by collecting a royalty on products sold using the OCIA seal. For a few years, Christine was hired as “Director of Certification”, and handled all the communication between the farmers, the inspectors and Lincoln. But before long, rival groups with no international office to fund started offering inspection at lower rates and this spelled the eventual demise of OCIA Ontario.
The practice of peer review had value in fostering accountability. It is an unfortunate fact that this element is absent from the legalistic regime we have now which relies almost entirely on documentation to evaluate whether or not the farmer is following the rules. Farmers working together in close contact can inspire and assist each other in striving for excellence and can more readily detect if one party is not playing by the rules.
I experienced this powerfully in the 1990’s when a small group of organic dairy farmers got together with the intention of segregating our milk and marketing it as organic. We had many hurdles to overcome. In Ontario, cow’s milk was all the same, with no exceptions, since the inception of supply management under the Ontario Milk Marketing Board which exercised an airtight monopoly on sales of milk to the processors. We would be the first to achieve segregation. We had to find a processor and we had to write many of the rules that would govern organic dairy. We met every month for a long time, often at each other’s barns, talking first about the standards – what was allowed, what was prohibited, then going to the house to update on the marketing front. What quickly became apparent to me was that within the group, there was a wide divergence of management expertise. Some excelled in one area and had room for improvement in several others. We could identify ideals in each area of management, and find at least one member of the group who achieved the ideal, but none of us could be the best in every aspect of caring for cows, growing crops and improving the soil. We needed to set minimum standards only, and we became a self-help group aiming for continuous improvement toward excellence. This was a memorable time for me, and I recalled fondly the good that came out of it when considering more recently how to proceed with a Grass Fed Standard.
As the value of organic food became more widely known, more products became available and more farmers were drawn to the movement, enticed by higher prices. During the 2000s, my time was taken up on two fronts: the education and recruitment of farmers, and the development of a regulatory framework. Working with the farmers was always rewarding, and to this day I have a great respect and admiration for families who work the land. Most are motivated by a genuine desire to do good. They are stewards of creation to the extent that their knowledge and background permit. Those who go against the flow and decide to launch into what is still considered to be a radical, risky alternative stream of production face possible rejection or ridicule from colleagues, and they have to navigate a market that is without the well-developed infrastructure of commodity production. They are admirable for their courage. What began to change as demand grew was the entry of new organic farmers who were more business-minded. Larger farms were making the transition, often relying on an explosion of online resources for their technical information and without any meaningful connection with a peer group of organic pioneers.
At the same time, multinational companies, motivated solely and explicitly by profit, were wanting in on the marketing end. These developments drove us to seek shelter from corruption in a legal standard with enforcement by the federal government. A legal definition of all the details of what was required and what was prohibited, backed up with oversight by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would ensure that we were all playing by the same rules. Consumers would not be fooled by false claims. It would make it harder to cheat and the legal seal would give assurance to corporate partners (the big boys of Canada’s ownership concentrated food retail scene) that they could trust the organic label. We anticipated increased recognition within the agricultural sector which would accompany this official “nod” from the government. And last but not least, we were playing catch-up on the international trade front with the Americans who had their “USDA Organic” seal on products in the year 2000, nine years ahead of ours.
But not everyone was enthusiastic that our grassroots reform movement was now in bed with the government. Some of the original founders and teachers of organic farming felt disenfranchised. Some charged that we had been co-opted by big business and lost our way. In retrospect, many of their worries were well founded. The “Canada Organic” seal is not a panacea for prevention of misleading claims. It is not the only or the best instrument to protect consumers or to encourage excellence in farming. I will elaborate in the next issue as we delve into “The downside or regulation”.