income, we wouldn’t be farming,” Johnson says.
There is a tinge of shame in this admission, as is true with other farmers I talk to who must rely on external income to stay afloat. But, in reality, there’s nothing abnormal about it. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, the average small farm earns 85–95 percent of its income from “off-farm sources” such as the wages of a spouse. Medium-size farms, ones that earn between $250,000 and $499,999 in annual sales, rely on off-farm resources for almost 50 percent of their income. This means that most small growers don’t even come close to earning a living from being farmers. Old news in many respects, but with an increasing emphasis on organic and local, the struggle of the small farmer is cast in a new light.
Needless to say, Johnson works hard. He raises his own animals, finishes the Huse cattle, does his own butchering, and brings Sweet Tree’s products to farmers’ markets twice a week, selling the goods himself. Before our group leaves, Johnson shows me a smokehouse he built last year. The idea was he could make smoked cuts, adding value to his meat, boosting his earning potential. But he hasn’t yet been able to use it because he can’t get USDA approval. Thanks to convoluted regulations, which he said Cornell University’s trusted extension workers couldn’t help him figure out, Johnson’s smoker sits idle.
As Johnson traces his efforts to make Sweet Tree more profitable, all the things he’s done to cut costs and be more self-sufficient, he says he’s getting worn-out. “That’s the point I’m at. I’m raising the beef, I’m doing the butchering, I’m smoking my own meat, I’m doing inventory, and the markets. If I try to do more, it becomes a snowball. I can’t say it can’t be done, I just don’t have the ambition to do it. I was always ambitious, but these last eight years, doing both the farming and the markets have really taken it out of me.” Throughout the visit Johnson tells me several times that he’s afraid he’s going to have to stop farming and go back to wage labor.
LOGIC OF THE LOCAL
In the summer of 2007 I place a call to the USDA’s National Organic Program, or NOP, in Washington, D.C. Established in 2002, the NOP is the top body in charge of overseeing the organic system in the United States. A man picks up without identifying the office. I ask to speak to someone in communications. He tells me to hold on, then puts the receiver down and continues a conversation that I can hear and that my call has obviously interrupted. Several minutes later he picks the phone back up. I ask how many people are currently in the office. He says six. I ask what he knows about organic farming. “Nothing,” he tells me. I ask how long he’s been at the job. “A couple of weeks.” He’s a temp.
From its inception in 2002 through 2008, the NOP staff fluctuated between five and eight people even though the program has a heavy workload. Its duties include interpreting and amending the constantly evolving regulations and enforcing organic rules. The NOP is also charged with training, accrediting, and monitoring the independent third-party bodies that issue organic seals. Approximately one hundred third-party certifiers are registered with the NOP, which might sound like a manageable number. But those companies are in turn responsible for keeping tabs on thousands of domestic as well as foreign farmers and processors that sell in the American market. From early 2008 through the end of 2009 the NOP lacked a director, operating instead under an acting director, Barbara Robinson, who held another full-time job at the USDA. Meantime, the key post of head of Compliance and Enforcement sat vacant until late 2008. Among Compliance and Enforcement’s stated goals for 2009 was to “establish an internal management system” because, for the first time, the division had a staff.
The NOP’s funding is allocated with each new farm bill. Congress writes and passes the legislation every five years and has never set aside mandatory financing for the USDA’s National Organic Program. Instead, each year the NOP must slog through the appropriations process in the House of Representatives and the Senate, justifying its costs to politicians who hold its fate. Each successive farm bill sets a ceiling on how much the NOP can receive, but no floor—Congress is under no obligation to give the program any funds. Although lawmakers have never outright denied resources, there’s no guarantee the money will come.
The most recent farm bill, passed in 2008, raises the NOP budget from about $1.5 million annually to $3 million for 2009, and $3.8 million for 2010. This represents the first significant increase since the agency opened despite that organics have seen annual growth rates in the double digits for over a decade. Thanks to the added funds, and President Obama’s apparent support, the NOP is undertaking a reorganization to better carry out its tasks. Most significantly the new plan involves hiring additional employees—by summer 2009 the office’s numbers surged to an all-time high of fourteen—and at last a full-time head, Miles McEvoy. While some changes will doubtless result, the NOP nevertheless remains starved of the resources it would need to become a vital tool for promoting and supporting truly ecological agriculture.
Other facets of the most recent farm bill offer support for organic farmers, but the scales are tipped well in favor of agribusiness. The document tenders billions toward marketing, distribution, research, extension, and education for growers using conventional factory methods. The law also shells out tens of billions more dollars to subsidize industrial farms. The 2008 farm bill rings in at about $300 billion. From such largesse the plan sets aside a meager $78 million for organic research and extension over five years. A fivefold increase from the previous farm bill’s spending on organic research and extension, the sum nevertheless reveals that more biologically destructive farming practices still rank high on the USDA and Congress’s list of priorities.
What has come of the first wave of organic agriculture from the 1970s demonstrates just how hard it can be to survive while keeping a green commitment intact. Some holistic growers have stayed in business yet remain cloistered in the confines of “boutique farming.” Here they serve a limited consumer base that can pay prices prohibitive to most shoppers. Morse Pitts is a prime example; what he’s doing shows that alternatives are possible, but its reach remains confined. Another outcome is that a great many organic and natural food endeavors have simply gone bust. Innumerable small cultivators who hung on by a thread, not unlike Frank Johnson, couldn’t ultimately make it. Finally, some farmers decided to play by the rules of the market and go up against the big guys. As is true in conventional agriculture, with more competition comes greater pressure to streamline production to lower prices and create a more uniform, and shippable, product. Case in point is the Washington State–based Cascadian Farm, started three decades ago by back-to-the-landers looking for alternatives to the mainstream. One of its founders ended up taking the farm in a more commercial direction and, in the 1990s, sold out to General Mills. Some now criticize Cascadian Farm’s practices as following a less rigorous version of organic, having surrendered more holistic methods to tap bigger markets. Jeff Moyer, current chair of the National Organic Standards Board, the official body that recommends standards changes, spoke to this when he told the Washington Post, “As the organic industry matures, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a balance between the integrity of the word organic and the desire for the industry to grow.”
Many Big Organic proponents argue that working on such a large scale pays off because it means a lot of synthetic chemicals that would have been used in conventional farming are avoided. Peter LeCompte, once a worker on a small organic farm who is now head of organic buying for General Mills, is a prime example. When I interview him, he tells me that even though he knows working for the establishment compromises him, it’s the best, and most realistic, option for widespread change he can see. Agriculture went toxic and industrial largely because doing so was most effective at beating rivals and fattening the bottom line. When producers try to achieve greater economies with organic, they often do so by swerving back toward less sustainable cultivation methods—that’s why LeCompte and his ilk must compromise. Ultimately, however, this incarnation of organic stifles biologically sound farming because it helps the major food producers maintain their dominant position; small growers can’t compete with firms such as General Mills in lobbying Congress for incentives and regulations to bolster their market position. Big Organic reinforces the
