News

By Trevor Findley, OFRF Senior Policy Associate

The Organic Farming Research Foundation’s (OFRF) Senior Policy Associate, Trevor Findley, participated in the Organic Trade Association’s (OTA) virtual fly-in, where organic supporters asked members of Congress to support a bill to increase accountability in organic standards. 

The National Organic Program is run by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service and includes a federal advisory committee that makes recommendations to improve and advance organic standards.  This committee, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), meets twice a year and accepts public input at its meetings. 

Since inception, the NOSB has made 20 consensus recommendations on a range of topics to improve organic standards, but USDA has not yet acted on any of the recommendations.  Many of the recommendations include topics of interest to consumers, including animal welfare standards, the production of personal care products, organic production in greenhouses, and aquaculture in organics.  In the absence of clear standards on these topics, the organizations that certify organic producers have inconsistently interpreted and applied existing standards. 

The bill proposed by OTA, HR 2918 – Continuous Improvement and Accountability in Organic Standards Act, would require USDA to do three things: (1) clear the backlog of recommendations from the NOSB that have not been implemented, (2) issue a final rule to implement all new recommendations within one year of the NOSB approving the recommendation, and (3) report to Congress on an annual basis whether certifiers have implemented the new rules and whether any inconsistencies exist.  The bill has bi-partisan support and is being championed by Rep. Peter Defazio (OR-4) and Rep. Rodney Davis (IL-13). 

To advocate for the bill, OTA and its members met with 29 different Congressional offices and sought additional co-sponsors for the bill.  While passage of the bill as a standalone measure is uncertain, there is hope that if the bill doesn’t pass on its own that it would wind up in larger legislation such as the 2023 Farm Bill.

By Shelby Kaplan, OFRF Research and Education Intern
She recently graduated from University of Wisconsin Madison with a degree in plant pathology and a minor in food systems. She will continue her studies in the fall at ASU to receive a graduate certificate in food policy and sustainable leadership.

As an OFRF intern this summer, I have been working with Thelma Velez, the Research and Education Program Manager, to create a free soil health course titled, Soil Health Strategies for the Southern Region. This course builds on a recent OFRF publication, Building Healthy Living Soils for Successful Organic Farming in the Southern Region, and describes challenges in Southern soil health and ways to mitigate these problems in a sustainable way. 

Personally, the course is thought-provoking and provides a way for me to learn more about organic farming practices. I have an interest in sustainable agriculture and am eager to learn more about the organic farming space, while also hoping to help farmers improve their practices with science-based information. Although the Midwest environment where I went to college differs quite a lot from Southern ecosystems, I have travelled abroad several times in order to broaden my knowledge of organic agriculture in other regions. 

The goal of the course is to assist organic farmers in the South and show practical strategies to help improve their crops by improving the soil, which will build resilient farms. Healthy soil is the basis for successful farming, so finding ways to better manage it and improve on the practices already in place is critical. As the climate continues to change and put increased pressure on farmers, there needs to be an even greater focus on ways to improve the capabilities of soil and the ways we use it.

Supporting organic farmers by providing up-to-date information is an important step in improving organic systems and our environment. Helping to create this course has taught me more about organic systems in the Southern environment, their challenges, as well as possible solutions. 

I hope to continue supporting the organic farming community through working with OFRF in other ways in the future!

The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University recently published The Critical To-Do List for Organic Agriculture, which features 46 recommendations that would improve the state of organic agriculture in the United States. OFRF Executive Director, Brise Tencer, and consultants Mark Schonbeck and Ferd Hoefner, were acknowledged for their advice and support in helping formulate the 46 recommendations.

While policy-based improvements can be time consuming, the majority of recommendations in the report could be accomplished administratively by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), meaning the USDA can make the changes without any additional input from Congress.

Among the 46 recommendations are a number of priorities that the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) has prioritized and advocated for, including recommendations to:

(1) develop a national organic plan;
(2) implement a USDA-wide organic agenda;
(3) take a whole of government approach to organic agriculture;
(4) restore the organic advisor to the Secretary;
(7) address racial justice and social equity;
(12) increase organic research;
(23) reinvest in the Organic Transitions program;
(25) restore cost-share funding;
(33) elevate organic in climate policy;
(35) promote ecosystem services;
(37) increase conservation support;
(39) fund research on breeds and seeds adapted to climate change;
(40) identify organic as climate smart;
(43) improve crop insurance tools;
(44) incent recoupling crops and livestock; and
(46) restore the field buffer initiative.

For some recommendations–such as implementing a USDA-wide organic agenda–OFRF has already developed and shared more specific, agency-by-agency recommendations with the USDA. In addition, in an April 2021 letter to Secretary Vilsack, OFRF specifically asked the Secretary to implement several of the recommendations, such as restoring the organic advisor to the Secretary, increasing organic research at USDA to match organic’s six percent market share, restoring cost-share funding, and increasing conservation support.

We look forward to working with Secretary Vilsack and his staff to implement these changes in the coming years!

July 13, 2021—OFRF is excited to announce that we are now accepting Letters of Intent (LOI) for our research grant program. This grant cycle, in addition to continuing our support for farmer-led research, OFRF is prioritizing applications from early career researchers and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We believe it is critical to foster the next generation of researchers and support historically underserved and marginalized communities, while also ensuring all farmers have the most up-to-date and science-based information. OFRF is reserving half of our grants for BIPOC applicants. 

At OFRF, we recognize climate change is one of the most pressing challenges for farmers, ranchers, and society as a whole. Therefore, we are prioritizing research that maximizes the potential for organic agriculture to be part of the climate solution. “It is especially important that OFRF research grants continue to support projects that directly address the climate crisis and also build resilience within our farms, ranches, rural communities, and the broader food system,” said Thelma Velez, the Research and Education Program Manager at OFRF.

OFRF will fund projects for up to $20,000 for one year of research. Submissions must fall under at least one of the six research priority areas: soil health focus; weed, pest, and disease management focus; resilient cultivars focus; livestock and poultry focus; social science focus; and/or resilience focus. Project submissions may be research-based or integrated (research, education, and/or extension). Additionally, the research must take place on property or land that is certified organic, unless it falls under the social science and/or resilience focus priority area. 

Primary applicants or Co-PIs must identify as a farmer, rancher, or early career researcher residing in Canada, Mexico, or the United States. Early career researchers for this grant are defined as: pre-tenure faculty, postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and/or researchers that have received their MS or PhD within the past seven years (graduation year 2014). Successful applicants will be notified in Fall 2021 and invited to submit a full proposal with funding finalized in 2022.

OFRF is committed to supporting innovative research that meets the current challenges of organic farming, and fosters the adoption and improvement of organic farming systems. Since 2006, OFRF has invested over $3M in 355 research projects to address the needs of organic growers. Techniques and findings from OFRF-funded research have been widely implemented by organic farmers and ranchers, with information disseminated online, in publications, and at farming conferences and field days. All research results are free and open source at www.ofrf.org/research/grant-awards/.

We look forward to another year of outstanding project submissions! Thank you to the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) for the continuation of our partnership to fund on-farm research advancing the climate benefits of organic agriculture systems.

Letter of Intent and Instructions

LOI are reviewed and approved by the OFRF Board of Directors, majority of whom are certified organic farmers and ranchers. Please complete the application and submit no later than 5:00pm PST Friday August 20, 2021.

• View the Request for Letters of Intent and application form. 

Have a question? Read our FAQ. If you have additional questions, you may contact the OFRF Research Grants team at grants@ofrf.org.

By Ferd Hoefner, OFRF policy advisor

Right after taking office, President Biden issued an Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis. Among many other things, the Order directed USDA to collect stakeholder input regarding climate change mitigation and resilience within the agricultural and forestry sectors.

Specifically, the Order asked USDA to “collect input from Tribes, farmers, ranchers, forest owners, conservation groups, firefighters, and other stakeholders on how to best use Department of Agriculture programs, funding and financing capacities, and other authorities, and how to encourage the voluntary adoption of climate-smart agricultural and forestry practices that decrease wildfire risk fueled by climate change and result in additional, measurable, and verifiable carbon reductions and sequestration and that source sustainable bioproducts and fuels.”

Agriculture and forestry groups responded, with over 2,700 comment letters filed, providing the Department with a wide diversity of views and much to contemplate. OFRF submitted recommendations, as did two groups of which OFRF is a member – the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the Organic Trade Association.

OFRF’s comments focused on steps the Administration can and should also take on its own, without requiring further action from Congress, to assist farmers and ranchers meet the challenge represented by climate change, including calls to:

• Recognize and establish the organic method as a major strategy for carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation, and building resilience to the impacts of climate change.

• Increase USDA research investment into organic agriculture to become at least commensurate with the organic food market share, currently about 6% of total food sales in the US.

• Continue to build the capacity of NRCS to support the conservation and climate-mitigation efforts of organic producers.

• Restore Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) Enhancements that specifically address the needs of organic and transitioning-organic farmers and ranchers.

• Ensure racial equity in implementation and delivery of new USDA initiatives related to Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry, and in all existing research, conservation, crop insurance, and other USDA programs.

The “fair share” research investment point dovetails with OFRF’s advocacy with the Administrator and National Program Leaders of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service to ramp up their investments in organic research, moving from current less than one percent levels to six or more percent over the course of the next four years. OFRF has also encouraged Congress to not only appropriate $20 million for ARS organic-specific research in Fiscal Year 2022, but to also direct the agency to develop a five-year strategic plan for organic research and to assign national program leaders as part of that plan.

President Biden submitted his own budget requests to Congress on May 28. Despite asking Congress for the biggest increase in USDA funding in decades – a nearly $4 billion or 17 percent jump, the budget request from the White House included only level funding for the National Institute for Food and Agriculture’s Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative and the Organic Transitions Program and no specific reference to organic research at the Agricultural Research Service. The White House proposal did however include an $8 million increase in NIFA’s “IR-4” program to support pest management for specialty crops, citing the need for additional organic and biopesticides as one rationale among several for the proposed near 70 percent increase. 

The Biden proposal also calls on Congress to jump up the funding for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program from $40 million to $60 million and for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) from $435 million to $700 million. Organic research proposals have been funded by both programs, particularly the SARE program, in the past.

In addition to those specific competitive grant programs, perhaps the most notable element of the proposed budget requests related directly to climate change. The request asks for increased funding for ARS including $99 million for clean energy, $92 million for climate science, and $95 million to work with the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate (ARPA-C). The request also would include an additional $17 million for the NIFA to accelerate development of climate smart and carbon neutral agriculture through transdisciplinary systems level approaches to sequester carbon and use clean energy to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. None of these proposals includes any specific reference to organic, though most of them could potentially fund organic-relevant research.

Of course, the President proposes but the Congress disposes, so now attention turns to the congressional appropriations subcommittees who will begin marking up their FY 2022 government spending bills shortly. OFRF will continue to press for more adequate levels of organic-specific research dollars with the agricultural appropriators.

Beyond the Administration’s budget requests to Congress, great attention and speculation is also focused on how USDA plans to move to align USDA programs and regulations with President Biden’s climate agenda. While the 2,700+ public comments are being reviewed, the Department has also begun to take action, most notably with respect to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the largest USDA conservation program by dollars, and to cover cropping incentives within the federal crop insurance program. 

In April, the Farm Service Agency announced the re-institution of CRP incentive payments for targeted enrollments of water quality-focused conservation buffers as well as the creation of a new climate-smart practice incentive that will base payment rates on projected climate benefits of particular cover practices.

While this is good news, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) has not yet announced the re-establishment of the Organic Field Border Buffer Initiative, originally created in the final year of the Obama Administration to provide cost-share and land rental payments to organic farmers for installation of field border buffers through the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CCRP). This will hopefully be restarted soon.

On June 1, USDA’s Risk Management Agency announced a new, nationwide Pandemic Cover Crop Program that will provide a $5 an acre crop insurance premium discount for any farmer, including organic farmers, who have a crop insurance policy for 2021 and planted cover crops during the 2021 crop year. The funding is being drawn from the American Rescue Plan Act funds. 

While a retroactive payment will not spur new cover crop adoption, if the program is repeated and becomes permanent, it could help increase adoption over time. With cover cropping part and parcel of most organic systems, this could also help organic farmers through lower premiums. Unfortunately, for 2021, Whole Farm Revenue Protection insurance — a good insurance option for diversified organic farmers — is being excluded from the new premium discount opportunity, a misguided oversight that will hopefully be corrected if the program is continued in future years.

Expectations run high that additional climate and agriculture related actions will follow these two initial announcements. OFRF will be watching and using every opportunity to ensure that organic farming is included as a key part of climate solutions. For OFRF’s administrative agenda, perhaps no USDA appointments matter more than those for the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics and the USDA Organic Coordinator. After four months in office, there is still no word from the White House or the Secretary’s office about who will be named to fill these two important positions. But rest assured, once they are named, OFRF will be lining up meetings to share its wealth of knowledge and recommendations for advancing organic research!

Thanks to our climate partner, Clif Family Foundation for their support of our work!