Mark Winne has 45 years of experience in the food movement, starting in 1971 as a college student when he successfully raised $300 to start a local breakfast program for low-income children. Since that success, he has overseen the Hartford Food System, co-founded the Community Food Security Coalition, serves as a Senior Advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Livable Future, and is a popular speaker and author of several books.

In an introductory letter to GRAIN BY GRAIN: A Quest to Revive American Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food, Jaime Jennings writes, “You hold in your hands the story of an unsung hero. Bob Quinn is a straight-shooting, small-town farmer who turned his family farm into an organic multimillion dollar heirloom grain company.”

President and Founder of Organic Trade Association member Kamut International, Quinn, who co-authored the book with Liz Carlisle, shares his practical wisdom from a lifetime of farming--and scientific discovery.

Clif Bar and Pipeline Foods are stepping up to spearhead a much-needed program to train agricultural professionals working with organic or transitioning farmers. The project, supported by the Organic Trade Association’s industry-invested organic research, promotion and education GRO programming, is called the Organic Agronomy Training Series (OATS), will launch this spring in the Midwest.

Clif Bar has provided a cornerstone donation of $50,000 for the project, while Pipeline Foods has spearheaded a broad coalition to implement the project.

In 2018, Organic Grain Collaboration Grain member and organic food company Annie’s unveiled two new products featuring ingredients from rotational crops used in organic grain production. Its “Limited Edition” line features graham crackers made from hard red winter wheat and oats, and macaroni and cheese made with durum wheat and golden peas, and reflects a partnership with two organic farmers in Montana.

Since 2005, organic dairy cooperative Organic Valley has had in place a successful forward contract strategy for its members converting a dairy herd to organic.

The United States is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of conventionally grown grains. America’s farmers grow and ship out to foreign destinations vast amounts of cereal grains and grain legumes. But the production of organic grains in this country has been slow to take off, even as demand for organic grains has grown to unprecedented levels.

Whether you are an organic fruit or vegetable farmer, a livestock producer, a dairyman, an organic food or fiber processor or a distributor or retailer, stalled organic standards development, rooting out fraud in the organic industry, and conducting rulemaking on the tools available to certified organic operations were the key regulatory themes for the organic sector in 2018.

Organic food and agriculture have the potential to change the world. All too often, though, the participants in this sector fragment and expend energy criticizing each other as falling short of their own ideals. However, when we come together and rally around our common vision, we can achieve remarkable results. 

The Organic Trade Association received funding to conduct a GBI (Global Based Initiative) this summer to determine which types of social media campaigns are most effective for closing sales of U.S. agricultural exports in our top export markets and create a process for evaluating these campaigns in line with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) performance measures.