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Organic farming is a new boom industry
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WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Step through the eucalyptus trees tracing the southern edge of Knoll Farms and a neighboring field of dirt unfolds, flat and tilled into tidy rows.
In the summer, a single plant, corn, overruns nearly all of the 50-some acres. Through the remaining seasons, the Brentwood land mostly lies dormant, uncovered, as winds continually abrade the topsoil.
It could not look more different from the hodgepodge of plants, more than 100 species, crowding the 10-acre field. Rosemary bushes rub against artichokes, lamb’s-quarters and amaranth, which in turn flirt with habanero, jalapeno and serrano peppers.
This intensive interplanting, or polyculture, reduces each crop’s susceptibility to disease, lessens the need for synthetic chemicals and pumps nutrients back into the earth. But despite these benefits, the practice is not mandated under the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s “certified organic” standards, something the Knolls consider an unconscionable oversight.
“They’re trading organic [fertilizers] for traditional, but they’re not treating the soil the way they should,” said Kristie Knoll, who purchased the farm with her husband, Rick, in 1979. “You have to look at the big picture.”
To earn organic certification, produce can’t be grown using genetically modified organisms or artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and animals can’t be raised with regular use of antibiotics and growth hormones.
But many in the sustainable farming movement insist far more should be done to protect the environment, whether it is growing polycultures like the Knolls do or distributing food exclusively locally. They say they believe these and other founding tenets of the movement have increasingly been ignored as the organic industry has matured.
“The process really started with the entry of some big players as well as the attempt to codify the standards through a federal program,” said Michael Pollan, a UC Berkeley journalism professor and author of the best-selling book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” “[This] was bound to pay short shrift to certain elements of the organic ideal.”
Some longtime flag bearers, such as the Knolls, have forsaken the organic label altogether, dubbing it the “O” word. Others are remaining organic while quietly exceeding the government rules, farming according to personal standards of environmental stewardship.
Many of these growers label themselves “beyond organic,” but it’s a catchall for many different sustainable methods.
It can mean embracing polycultures or growing biodynamically like Cannard Farms in Sonoma Valley and Ceago Vinegarden in Mendocino do. This practice, sometimes dubbed “Super Organic,” means following a set of highly specific but all-natural techniques for creating composts and controlling pests. Critics argue that some of the methods, such as stuffing crushed quartz into a cow horn and burying it, are more alchemy than science.
The beyond-organic practice garnering the most attention recently is local distribution. Supporters cite two rationales, one economic and the other environmental.
Many say, for instance, that whatever ecological benefits are accrued growing organically are effectively offset if substantial fossil fuels are burned shipping those products across the country or internationally. On average, U.S. food travels more than 1,500 miles from farm to plate, according to the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute.
A 2005 study published in the British journal “Food Policy” found that local food is actually more “green” than organic, according to the BBC.
Consuming food within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of where it is grown would generate an annual environmental savings of 2.1 billion pounds in the United Kingdom, as less money goes to clean up pollution and repair public infrastructure. If all the country’s farms went organic, the savings would total only 1.1 billion pounds per year.
Separately, local distribution creates an economic niche for small farms and farmers, who typically can’t match the prices of large-scale conventional farms or take advantage of the same national distribution networks.
“It’s not a level playing field,” said Judith Redmond, co-owner of Full Belly Farm in Guinda, northwest of Sacramento. The 250-acre certified organic farm distributes about 95 percent of its sweet corn, tomatoes, melons and other produce within 180 miles, primarily through restaurants, direct sales to consumers and farmers markets.
Redmond said most small- and medium-sized farms can earn a living only through such alternative distribution pipelines, where large farms can’t or don’t compete.
Many chefs, connoisseurs and trade groups have also embraced local distribution.
EarthBound Farm lies at the opposite end of the organic spectrum from the beyond-organic growers. The company, founded in 1984 as a 2-acre Carmel Valley farm, is now one of the largest shippers of organic produce on the continent. Per the definition of organic, it doesn’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, or employ genetically modified seeds.
But it grows monocultures and ships across the country, disregarding two founding tenets of the organic movement, Pollan wrote critically in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Indeed, EarthBound produce sits on the shelves of 74 percent of U.S. supermarkets, including Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway and Whole Foods. It was also one of the brands that voluntarily recalled spinach during the E. coli outbreak last month.
It is a model that has increasingly come to typify the modern organic industry, said Pollan, who calls it “industrial organic.” Many small organic or beyond-organic farmers refer to companies such as EarthBound or Grimmway Farms, the largest producer of both conventional and organic carrots, as “Big Organic” or “The Organic Empire.”
EarthBound and Grimmway did not respond to requests for comment. But retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is significantly broadening its organic offerings, defends large-scale organic farming and distribution.
It lowers costs and widens availability, Spokeswoman Karen Burk said.
Off the record, representatives of some national grocers and large organic farms say the beyond-organic set’s denunciations of scale smack of elitism or idealism. Not everyone, after all, has the time and resources to shop at farmers markets or eat at Chez Panisse. And not every area of the country is sufficiently fertile to feed its local populace.
JAMES TEMPLE
Contra Costa Times
