Programs - Farm Sustainability

	"WHO OWNS ORGANIC? The Global Status, Prospects, and Challenges of a Changing Organic Market" SUMMARY POINTS
Organic agriculture has grown from a small-scale niche market to a $23 billion global enterprise. As such, organic is the most dynamic and rapidly growing sector of the global food industry. The authors of Who Owns Organic? argue the necessity for careful thought and vigorous action to hold on to organic’s potential for addressing the problems of world poverty and hunger and enhancing environmental and social sustainability. The new publication from RAFI-USA reports on the status and trends of the international phenomenon of organic agriculture. The document is a step toward a baseline of the organic market from which future changes can be evaluated. In Who Owns Organic? authors Michael Sligh and Carolyn Christman are cautiously optimistic about the direction of organic agriculture. They argue that a chief task of organic is to manage its great success and to preserve organic integrity as organic grows. The key question, they suggest, is this: Can organic’s expansion be balanced with preserving and extending the fundamental principles that have spurred its growth? Among the challenges:
The organic curve is still rising: A few very rapidly growing organic sectors--and a handful of best-selling brands--are blazing the trail into the mass market. The biggest increases for 1998-2003 are projected for frozen food, ready meals, baby food, baked goods and cereals, and dairy products. These are built on a current annual growth rate of 15-20% for organic, compared with 4-5% for the overall food industry.
Food giants are buying in: Flashy annual growth rates of organic food sales have attracted multinational food corporations. They have acquired organic brand leaders, established partnerships with organic companies, and developed their own organic product lines. In the U.S., the organic food share is just over 1% of the total food industry, but organic’s success generates powerful interest from mainstream food producers and retailers, raising the question: Is concentration a necessary cost of growth in the organic market? As it grows, will organic safeguard access and rewards for small farmers and processors?
Organic rewards farmers, but these rewards are vulnerable. So far, organic has carried a price premium for farmers and workers. But fair prices need to be institutionalized to ward against downward pressures caused by the entry of large corporations into the organic sector. A related task will be to make sure that organic production contracts provide growers fair incomes and good working conditions. how will organic contracts guarantee the equity currently lacking in most contracts for conventional agriculture?
What about GM contamination? Genetically modified crops continue to advance--with the United States accounting for 68% of the worldwide 130 million acres of GM plantings--creating the risk of triggering a threshold of “acceptable” contamination of GM into organic crops. The fate of major world crops such as organic wheat and corn, is jeopardized by the commercialization of GM crops.
It takes more than dollars and acres to measure organic growth: Besides sales and acreage, social components can be used to gauge the value of organic goods. Additional qualitative indicators of success can be embodied in a broad ideological framework as being good for the earth, water, air, animals, workers, farmers, and consumers and their communities. “Will the organic marketplace remain on the cutting edge and meet its potential?” the authors write, “or will it relinquish this role to the global system and become little more than a marketing niche or even the shadow of what it set out to replace. This is the right time to ask, “Who owns organic?” We all do.”
View full report (PDF file)