As CEO of an organic marketing company that represents over four thousand acres of organic permanent crop production and more than one hundred and fifty different growers, there are always more than enough concerns to go around, from water, to labor, to new crop diseases. As if that were not enough, all of us, as organic industry players, are fighting the continued struggle of protecting the image and integrity of our common brand and mission: Organic. 

BUSINESS MILESTONES

Amy’s Kitchen has broken ground in Goshen, NY, for the construction of a 369,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution center. Completion is scheduled for 2018, and will create 700 new jobs.

Aurora Organic Dairy Corp. is investing $100 million to build a new dairy processing and warehouse facility in Columbia, MO, to help facilitate distribution to the eastern United States. The company expects the plant to be fully operational in 2019.

I am an organic cotton bale, grown in the U.S. In real life, I am 500 times this size, weighing approximately 500 pounds.

My 500-pound size can typically be produced on less than 1 acre, depending on weather conditions. I can produce 1,217 T-shirts, 215 pairs of jeans, 249 bed sheets or 4,321 socks.

But, I wasn’t always organic. Twenty-five years ago, I was grown conventionally with the help of numerous synthetically produced toxic pesticides and fertilizers. I will tell you how I got here.

Alice Rolls had worked with environmental non-profits for 30 years prior to becoming the Executive Director of Georgia Organics in 2004—a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting Georgia-produced organic food to Georgia families. At that time, there were only 25 certified organic farms in the state.

Organic Dietary Supplements

The Dietary Supplements Council first convened in August 2016 under the leadership of Bethany Davis from FoodState Inc. The aim of the council is to provide a forum for discussing issues, challenges and opportunities related to dietary supplements and to grow the organic supplement sector.

The voice of producers just got amped up by over a thousand notches at the Organic Trade Association with the recent new memberships of Pennsylvania Certified Organic and Georgia Organics into the association’s Farmers Advisory Council.

The Organic Trade Association (OTA) strongly recognizes the fundamental role organic seed plays in the success of a thriving organic farm system, and over the years has consistently supported the need to improve ongoing efforts to develop and use organic seed and planting stock. We acknowledge, however, that the organic regulations allow for the use of non-organic seed and/or planting stock when organic equivalent varieties are not available in the appropriate quantity, quality or form.

The organic industry has been working on defining and applying animal welfare requirements to the organic standards for over a decade. This work culminated in a final rule released just prior to the Administration change in January. Since that time, the effective date of the final rule has been delayed twice. Accompanying the most recent delay to November 14, the U.S. Department of Agriculture opened a comment period asking the public to weigh in on four options:

Major league baseball player Jayson Werth doesn’t look like an organic farmer—especially when he’s at the plate or in the outfield in his Washington Nationals uniform. But, looks can be deceiving.

The star hitter and outfielder has batted in almost 800 runs, hit more than 200 home runs and helped win a World Series in his now 15-year major league baseball career. He’s kept his eyes on the ball and on his health, and has eaten organic for more than a decade. And for almost a decade now, he’s also been an organic farmer.