What is the Rightful Role of Organic Standards?

What is driving the development of organic standards?

Consumers and markets demand products that fulfill other requirements than the traditional core organic topics.  Pressure also comes from inside the organic community, where activists work for their special interest topics to enter into and gain more clout within the realm of organic standards. These pressures include introducing into organic standards comprehensive requirements for social justice, climate change, animal welfare, biodiversity, and food safety.  “How much more can one organic standard stand?” some ask.  And how much more can and should producers take on in order to meet organic standards, which now in regulations have become the minimum legal requirement to trade? An example of this is the new set of requirements for animal welfare in the US National Organic Program (see related article in this issue). One member of the National Organic Standards Board, when commenting at its December meeting on the proposed new rule making on animal welfare, cautioned his colleagues on the Board to consider the paperwork burden that will be imposed for the producer’s organic system plan – easier for large operations with many employers and resources, but tough for the small producer, including poor producers in least developed countries who might never have market opportunities to export to the US under the provisions.

While all the aforementioned topics represent noble social and environmental ideals and goals, what is the rightful role of organic standards?  Should such requirements be integrated into “organic” standards, should they be add-on modules or should they belong to the policies and image of individual market actors? If they were to be integrated into organic standard how can we support producers to meet them?   How can we avoid increasing barriers to trade?

Are standards, even in the traditional topics, becoming overly prescriptive?  Have standards reached a level of fine-tuning that the activity to develop and implement them represent the law of diminishing returns?  Should each step of  “how” to achieve an objective in organic agriculture be carved in stone, or should the producer be regarded as a manager of his farm’s agro-ecosystem and allowed to make his own plan about how to achieve broad objectives?  Should standards reverse course toward the “old days” where there were a few things prohibited and a short list of desired outcomes?

Mainstreaming organic agriculture in trade and policy may make standards less useful as a tool to move us closer to the goals of organic. Are there other ways – in the market, through education or otherwise – we can stimulate or motivate producers to be “better”? Or are there other ways to reshape the standards to allow easier entry and still lead to continual improvements?

Participants at the GOMA Conference will engage in a discourse about these compelling issues and questions on the rightful role of organic standards.  On the second day of the conference, three speakers, Mr. Bavo ven den Idsert of the Dutch Association of Organic Producers and Traders, Ms. Susanne Padel of Elm Farm Research Center, and Mr. Thilak Kariyawasam of the Lanka Organic Agriculture Movement will address the role, impact and future development of organic standards, followed by ample time for discourse and opportunity to incorporate recommendations into the conference conclusion.  This is just one reason not to miss the GOMA Conference.