Plenary Lecture
Emerging Policies and Contradictions in the US: The Organic Label as a Agroecological Policy Lever
2024 Volume 60 Issue 1 Pages 49-53
Details
2024 Volume 60 Issue 1 Pages 49-53
Scaling up agroecology in the United States means setting the stage for agroecology to first exist. The concept remains largely foreign in American policymaking, for a number of reasons. Political, cultural, geographic, and economic challenges persist in stymieing agroecology as an integrated pillar of American agriculture. At the same time, the federally-regulated Organic label continues to grow and presents a potentially powerful policy lever to advance agroecology. Whether through international trade agreements, participatory citizen rulemaking, or the ongoing project of consumer and policymaker education, the National Organic Program in the United States and the standardization of organic regulations across the Global North represent a political opportunity for agroecology, in all its regional diversity.
Comparing the progress of agroecology in the United States to the rest of the Global North has benefits and challenges, not least of which is the comparative political situation and an historical legacy of American exceptionalist ideology. While the organic label as a mechanism for commerce and agroecology as a movement and practice are often considered separately, this paper seeks to argue that linking them is a tactical political strategy that has the potential to actually advance agroecology in the United States.
Agroecology has gained important traction in-ternationally among producers, researchers, and policymakers. Its environmental benefits have only become more pronounced as a tool to mitigate the effects of climate change and even help reverse it. However, the concept remains largely foreign in American policymaking, for a number of reasons. This article will explore the existing status of agroecology in the American policy sphere, and consider whether the federally-regulated Organic label can be used as a lever to increase the uptake and understanding of agroecology in the United States.
As defined by Gliessman (2016) and DeLonge et al. (2016), the adoption of agroecology can be broken into five levels or stages:
L1: improving system efficiency to reduce the use of inputs;
L2: substituting more sustainable inputs and practices into farming systems;
L3: redesigning systems based on ecological principles;
L4: reestablishing connections between producers and consumers to support a socio-ecological transformation of the food system;
L5: On the foundation created by the sustainable farm-scale agroecosystems achieved at Level 3, and the new relationships of sustainability of Level 4, build a new global food system, based on equity, participation, democracy, and justice, that is not only sustainable but helps restore and protects earth’s life support systems upon which we all depend.
This 5 Levels System provides a roadmap to implementing and institutionalizing agroecology. The research of De Longe et al. used this system of analysis to examine almost $300 million in research funding by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in fiscal year 2014. They acknowledged that L5 is outside the scope of the funding they analyzed, but wrote: “The long-term success of agroecological systems depends on not only science and practice, but also on developing the community, business, and policy supports that can ensure economic sustainability. Thus, projects that link on-farm practices (L3) to socioeconomic supports (L4) are believed to provide an important foundation for a larger scale transition to sustainable agriculture (L5), but such projects are exceptionally rare” (DeLonge et al., 2016). In order to scale up agroecology in the United States via policy, these precursors must already be in place and ideally, supported by the federal government. Yet “agroecology” does not exist anywhere on the official news website of the USDA, indicating that while grantees and affiliates may express an interest in agroecology or include it on their grant reports, USDA itself has no official programs or news to announce regarding the concept (USDA, 2023). This makes comparisons difficult to the European Union and individual countries and continental advisory bodies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where agroecology at least exists in the political lexicon.
Consumer demand tells a different story. While U.S. organic exports grew at an average rate of 6% per year since 2016 (reaching $734 million in 2020), U.S. organic imports have grown at more than twice the rate of exports, averaging 14% per year since 2016 to reach $4 billion in 2020 (Organic Trade Association, 2023). India is largest country of origin, a worrisome fact as the U.S. ended its organic trade equivalency agreement with India in January of 2021 (Organic Trade Association, 2022). This trade imbalance and dependence on a trading partner with a lapsed organic equivalency agreement speaks to the difficulty of converting domestic farmland or production practices to certified organic, as well as overall government apathy towards the organic market.
Why the slow or nonexistent progress on an accepted suite of farming practices that is showing increasing traction among consumers both domestically and internationally? I will share the broad categories of obstacles as viewed from my 14 years of experience in American sustainable agriculture policy, largely at the federal and state level.
One is cultural and geographic, as chemical intensive agriculture has been established as the American “norm” since the mid-20th century and systems and institutions are slow to pivot to the different demands of agroecological producers. The ongoing structural barriers of expensive land, short-term leases, and industrial supply chains continue to limit the degree to which growers are able to utilize organic and/or agroecological farming techniques and realize their many benefits, despite the market growth of organic sales and support from civil society and consumer groups dedicated to sustainable agriculture (Carlisle et al., 2022). Seminal definitions for agroecology in the US emerged out of California (Gliessman, 1990) and the first state law governing the implementa-tion of agroecological practices was passed in California (California Organic Food Act, 1979), 4500 km and three time zones from Washington, DC. Yet only one term -- organic -- was enshrined in federal law, with the establishment of the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990. Considering their intertwined evolution, this was a watershed moment for agroecology. Still, it remains difficult for producers from the West Coast (let alone Hawaii) to get to Washington, DC and make the case face to face with lawmakers, and then return home and share strategies and policy news.
Another is political exclusion and the frustration and antipathy it breeds. U.S. political systems have consistently excluded agroecology advocates, even while paying them lip service. For example, the USDA’s “Agricultural Innovation Agenda” is aligned around a central premise to “increase American agricultural production by 40 percent,” a goal which has no consensus among American farmers, consumers, researchers, or environmentalists (USDA, 2021). While the document, which was released scarcely a week before the end of the Trump administration, lists a number of organic advocacy organizations as “en-gaged stakeholders,” their recommendations for either organic or agroecological agriculture were not included in the final draft. The report’s release was over-shadowed by then-Undersecretary Scott Hutchins’ decision to dismantle a number of USDA internal research agencies and his own background as a retired executive at Dow-Dupont, a major agrochemical company (Guarino, 2019; NSAC, 2019).
The counterculture roots of organic and natural farming, not only in California but in many other regions of the country, can preclude involvement in electoral politics. Organic support from the state government lags in California today, and there is no mass citizen’s movement for organic, much less agroecological, policy change. A review of 21 State Departments of Agriculture found that other states far exceeded organic’s birthplace in their provision of farmer education, technical assistance, marketing services, and other support needed by organic and potential organic producers (Driscoll and Ichikawa, 2017). Other states, particularly in the South, fared even worse. California’s state-appointed Organic Products Advisory Committee currently has 23 vacancies out of a 30-member board, suggesting a fatigue or antipathy among organic advocates to working in partnership with the state government (CDFA, 2023). Policy change is messy. It requires long-term, middle-term and short-term strategies and can be frequently derailed by unexpected and unrelated circumstances. It requires com-promise and evolution. It requires many boring meetings in uncomfortable clothes, following arcane governance rules meant to increase democratic participation but which in practice can serve to exclude it. It requires constant education of others in the most basic framework of whatever you are working on, no matter how complex or evolved that policy area has become. You must patiently and repeatedly explain, prove, attempt to convince, and try to fit your policy priorities into a rigid box of policy passage and implementation. With limited resources of time and money, producers and advocates often choose to direct their attention elsewhere due to the intransigence of the USDA.
Frustration with these processes as well as outdated organic regulations that some feel have allowed too much dilution of agroecological principles to be labeled organic has led to a splintering of efforts among those committed to agroecological principles. A plethora of third-party labels has emerged, including biodynamic, re-generative, “beyond organic,” “certified transitional,” non-GMO, animal welfare approved, and other “neoliberal market-based strategies” (Pechlaner, 2023). The private-sector administration of all of these labels speaks volumes of the industry and movement’s departure from policy.
Despite these challenges, there are windows of policy possibilities across local, state, and federal policy in the United States. Some of these have been made possible by the economic and social disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in California, an Organic-to-School pilot program was proposed in the state legislature during the 2019-20 session (California Legislation, 2019). While it did not pass, some legislative language made its way into Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 budget, which appropriated $8.5 million to support a state Farm-to-School grant program. That funding increased to $60 million in 2022. The program prioritizes funding for projects that “include California food producers who utilize climate smart agriculture practices, climate smart agriculture production systems like certified organic or transitioning to certified organic, or other regenerative strategies.”1
At the federal level, the USDA in summer 2022 announced the creation of the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP). Approximately $300 million in federal funds (including from the American Rescue Plan and other pandemic-related emergency spending measures) have been directed towards helping producers transition to organic and in growing the organic workforce and market2. USDA-NIFA also funded a first-ever Agroecology Conference that built on the efforts of the Agroecology Research-Action Collective and brought together agroecologists from universities around the country to reflect, regroup, and build international connections (Montenegro et al, 2021; University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology, 2023).
Internationally, the signing of organic trade equivalency agreements between the US and EU (2012), Japan (2013), and Korea (2014) as well as other countries represents significant federal investment in the advancement of organic. The agreements expose American policymakers to the often-stringent environmental protections of other countries and allow American organic producers to grow their markets. In total, they have the potential to undermine the agroecological origins of organic by incentivizing large-scale industrial operations, to amplify and unite an international movement for sustainable agriculture, both, or neither. Either way, the standardization of organic across the Global North represents a political opportunity for agroecology, in all its regional diversity.
Due to the legislated inclusion of citizen advisory board members (to include representatives from the scientific, consumer, handler-processor, retailer, environmental, and farming communities), the meaning of organic continues to be contested and considered with each quarterly open meeting of the National Organic Standards Board (Organic Foods Production Act, 1990). This represents success, not defeat. As an iterative process with proven market share and robust citizen involvement, organic remains a key policy tool to scale up agroecology in the Global North, including in the U.S. Organic can never encapsulate agroecology, which by definition must be a “big tent” of ideologies, cultural farming traditions, climatic conditions, and marketing ambitions. Along with state and local policies, policies and practices set at universities and foundations, and on-farm research, organic is just one part of a complicated puzzle to grow agroecology in the United States.
Thank you to Dr. Amber Sciligo for her review and helpful comments on this paper.
