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Growing Corporate
Imports Hurt Domestic Producers
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USDA: American Organic
Farmers Being Sold Out
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by Mark Kastle, The
Cornucopia Institute
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On the heels of the release
of the Cornucopia Institute’s study exposing the import-dependent
organic soy industry, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
substantiates Cornucopia’s findings. Organic manufacturers and farmers
are facing escalating competition from large conventional food
manufacturers entering the organic market, and companies are
increasingly looking to China and other countries to import organic
foods and ingredients.
“When agribusiness corporations enter the organic market, like Dean
Foods when it bought the Silk soymilk brand from a pioneering
independent company, they sometimes look abroad for cheaper imports or
abandon organics altogether, rather than maintain their commitment to
supporting domestic organic farmers,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, farm and
food policy analyst at Cornucopia. “The handlers mentioned in the USDA
report that now complain of shortages of domestically grown organic
crops are therefore by no means innocent victims of forces beyond their
control, but rather helped create these shortages by opting for cheaper
organic imports instead of supporting domestic farmers with sustainable
prices.” According to the USDA report, U.S. organic soybean production
started declining several years ago despite steeply increasing demand
for organic feed grains and consumer products such as soymilk. “As the
number of organic soybean producers has increased worldwide, U.S.
producers have faced increased competition for the domestic market,”
concludes Catherine Greene, USDA economist and lead author of the
report.
Cornucopia contends that the purported shortage of organic soybeans in
the United States is not a legitimate excuse for companies to import
cheap crops from China or abandon organic ingredient sourcing
altogether. “Our research reveals that there are many highly committed
organic companies that are offering products made with American-grown
soybeans,” says Vallaeys. Examples are Eden Foods, which continues its
long-standing relationships with domestic farmers who grow organic
soybeans, and new market players like Vermont Soy that are actively
engaged in recruiting existing local organic farmers to grow soybeans.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are companies like Dean Foods, a
leading agribusiness involved mainly in dairy, which markets Silk
soymilk. When Dean Foods first acquired the Silk brand, American
farmers were eager to ramp up domestic production of organic soybeans
for their soymilk. According to Cornucopia’s report, Dean Foods quickly
dashed their hopes, telling multiple midwestern farmers and farmer
cooperatives that they had to match the rock-bottom prices of Chinese
organic soybeans— a price they simply could not meet.
So Dean Foods bought Chinese soybeans for years, building its
commanding industry market share, before substantially decreasing its
support of organic agriculture altogether. Today, few Silk products are
certified organic and some are even processed with toxic chemicals and
labeled “natural.”
Merle Kramer, a marketer for the Midwestern Organic Farmers
Cooperative, based in Michigan, laments: “Dean Foods had the
opportunity to push organic and sustainable agriculture to incredible
heights of production by working with North American farmers and
traders to get more land in organic production, but what they did was
pit cheap foreign soybeans against the U.S. organic farmer, taking away
any attraction for conventional farmers to make the move into
sustainable agriculture.”
The USDA report concludes, “Despite the potential for organic
agriculture to improve the environmental performance of U.S.
agriculture, the national standard is having only a modest impact on
environmental externalities caused by conventional production methods
because the organic adoption rate is so low.” In other words, our
country could be reducing pesticide contamination of surface- and
groundwater, soil erosion, loss of wildlife, and other negative impacts
on the environment, but greed appears to have stunted the growth of
domestic organic agriculture.
As a by-product of its research, Cornucopia also creates scorecards
that rate organic dairy and soy foods brands based on their production
practices and ethical values. The Cornucopia Institute’s goal is to
help consumers differentiate between the brands that are truly
committed to organic values, from those that aren’t. It encourages
consumers to use the scorecards when shopping and to support the
companies that buy American-grown organic soybeans.”
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| Resources: |
Full report by The
Cornucopia Institute, “Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of
the Organic Soy Industry,” and the “Organic Soy Scorecard” are
available at www.cornucopia.org.
Full report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Emerging Issues in
the U.S. Organic Industry,” is available at www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB55. |
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