What does Beyond Organic mean?

8 March, 2007

Can Ecology and Commerce Coexist?
By Jay Walljasper, Ode.
from Alternet

"Ronnie Cummins, founder of the Organic Consumers Association, a U.S.-based network of 850,000 socially responsible shoppers, notes, "The good news is that organic foods are growing so fast that no one can keep up with the demand." But he urges consumers and businesses to expand the scope of what it means for a product to be called organic or sustainable. "Fair-trade products are growing even faster than organic in Western nations," Cummins adds. "And another trend that is very big now is to buy local. There's real synergy now with these ideas and the organic movement. We have a perfect storm of massive marketplace interest in new ideas."".....One further idea that now inspires many socially conscious shoppers is supporting small-scale family growers instead of the factory farms that produce an increasingly large share of organic products. Jim Slama -- founder of FamilyFarmed.org -- is about to introduce a new label that will identify food as not only organic but grown by small farmers. "The bottom line is that organic consumers are driven by core values and want companies with those same values," he says. 'Corporate organic doesn't do it for many of them.'"

Now this is all fine and dandy at first glance. But, what has happened is that a few key phrases in the organic regulations, size limitations when it comes to grants, and DEFRA (UK) regulations, to list a few, the bases are loaded against the smallholder. Western governments are playing huge import/export games with food. Cheap meat and vegetables flood the wholesale market such that even though small retailers say they welcome local food, they will not pay more than they have to pay for the cheap imports. DEFRA has been telling farmers for the last few years: Get big or get out. Another example, you are a small shop and you want to buy in organic produce from one of the leading suppliers - it was, the last time I checked, a £25 delivery charge. When you are a small store, this cuts you out. So, only the large can compete. I suggest that the term beyond organic is misused. There is often very little difference in factory organic and factory non-organic farming when it comes to marketing, labour, retailing and distribution. Fair trade, social welfare, cash crops with heart are not aspects of Beyond Organic. Beyond organic stands for a whole-life emphasis on the health of the soil and health of the plants essential for both humans and the animals we eat. The measure of how organic a plant is consists in whether it has been introduced to and enabled to take up the vitamins, minerals and trace elements absolutely essential to human and animal health. Avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticides is not enough if the soil is not in a fit state to support a plant loaded with the essential nutrients. The Good Gardeners Association, for instance, are working on an inexpensive, hand-held measuring tool which could be used by the consumer to immediately test and access the nutrient content of a vegetable and vital life signs. Common sense tells us that there must be a health difference in a freshly picked apple and an apple that has been stored for months in nitrous oxide. A statement that there is no scientific evidence for this begs the scientific method, not our intuitive sense of what is healthy. This is what it means to go beyond organic.