The House and Senate are currently conducting conference committee negotiations where they will have to work out the vast differences between their two different versions of the farm bill. They have until September 30 to report a final farm bill, vote on it and pass it in the House and Senate, and then send to the President for signature before the current farm bill expires.

Some 200 organic stakeholders gathered this spring in Washington, D.C., for the Organic Trade Association’s 2018 Policy Conference to talk about the future of organic, and their roles in that future. Meeting in the historic National Press Building where for almost 100 years journalists have heard from American presidents and lawmakers, foreign heads of state, business titans and international celebrities, the organic advocates had a lot on their minds.

The CCOF Foundation is launching “Roadmap to an Organic California,” a new project for 2018 that will make the case for increasing certified organic land in California and recommend state policies to achieve 10 percent certified organic agricultural land by 2030. 

Following a public comment period, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in mid-December approved a final consent order settling its first-ever case against a company making false organic product claims.

It took 57 years and a dozen farm bills for organic to get a place in the nearly 1,000-page legislation that defines contemporary American agricultural policy.