 Hi there. Good afternoon. I'm Kathleen Nerrigan. I'm a professor at Arizona State University and I'm the director of a research center at the University called the Sweetie Center for Sustainable Food Systems. So glad you could join us today. We're going to spend an hour talking about organic food production. I'm going to start with a little overview of where we are in the US. So in 1990, the US Congress passed the law, the Organic Foods Production Act as part of the 1990 Farm Bill that established our National Organic Program. All the rules, all the standards around how organic food is grown and handled, all the labeling requirements, all the rules and training and accreditation that goes on for our inspectors, our certification agents. And I was working back then in the Senate for the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Pat Leahy, our senator from Vermont, and was involved in writing that legislation. And so if you're trying to figure out how old I am, just know the answer is old, because that was 30 years ago. And so we figure it's a really good time to reflect on where we are in organic. And I want to start this hour with a little bit of an overview to give you a sense of the market here. The US is the largest global market for organic food. In 2019, it's estimated to be about a $50.1 billion market. It is about 6% of all food sold in the US. You can find organic and about 75% of our grocery stores. Generally, organic products, and this is a real average here, it varies, there's a lot of variation, but generally you can expect organic to have a premium price over a conventionally grown product of about 20%. That means it's really attractive for smaller scale farmers, you can do high value crops on smaller acreage. And we'll scale up over time, but it's a real way that new entrance to American agriculture can get their foot in the door and survive. Assuming they survived the three years of transition from conventional reduction to the time when they can be certified as organic. Overall, in this country, demand greatly outstripped supply. Just to give you a sense of things, we import organic foods and a lot of its ingredients that would go into process products, but some are things that we don't grow a lot of coffee, though I recommend Hawaiian coffee. We import well over $2 billion worth of organic food while we export only about 600 million. A lot of those imports are foods that actually could be grown here in the United States, but we're in a challenging time in this country where our farmers and ranchers are aging out. And we need to find pathways for the next generation to come into American agriculture, repopulate our working lands, and we're finding a lot of these young people are very interested in organic. It's something that's attracting them to the sector. And so maybe that's the most important reason of all to be all in on organic, which we are at the Swedish Center for Sustainable Food Systems. We do a lot of research around organic. We're interested in policy prescriptions around organic. And again, we're really pleased that you can spend this hour with us. Let's begin by hearing from Gary Hershberg. You may know this name. He's the founder of Stonyfield. Very important company in our national history of organic agriculture. Stonyfield yogurt delicious. And he's an incredibly creative and thoughtful entrepreneur. It's a real pleasure to share his remarks with you today. Followed by short interview I'll do with Brianna sweetie, who is in her second of three years of transitioning farmland to organic production. She and her husband are young, optimistic farmers, new farmers, really connecting what they're doing on the land to community health and resiliency. And I would love for you to have an opportunity to hear from her. And then finally, I'll close with a recap as to the value of organic and why it's so important to global achievement of the sustainable development goals. It's an amazing little facility here. I love this. So I always get nervous when I come to Washington because I'm most definitely not a policy person as I look around at my policy minded friends. I am a business person. I've done my share of growing and yes milking and I sit on lots and lots of boards and lots of spaces. But once the policy questions start flying, I'm going to be pointing to a few friends in the audience who will bail me out here. But I'm really here to commit to contribute some perspective as a business person who's been in this space since some of you were born. Before some of you were born, I should say 1977 was my first real job in the organic space. And again, I've now on boards of everything from whey and and vegan protein to plant based alternatives, even yogurt alternatives. I imagine that to organic beer and confections. And you know, Kathleen just already sort of stole my thunder because I was going to say I view the organic sector the way I view standards, which is it's a continuous improvement process. It's never, we've never arrived and we never will arrive. It's a constant. You know, we still have a whole lot of work to do to evolve to a really mature economic sector. But I think it's important to take stock of what we have achieved. And also I want to talk to some of the challenges ahead and dip my toes a little bit in the policy space because there's obviously some immediate work that is needed. So you have to understand 1983 organic, right? At that time it meant that you had to chew extra. You got the, you know, remember the dark dirty natural food stores? You're laughing because you visited them with me. But I mean it was a different kind of world and somewhere around the mid late 80s, late early 90s, we kind of all realized we're in the food business. Those of us in the food business obviously we have personal care and the apparel organic sectors of those two industries also have been dynamos in growth. But we kind of realized it was about taste and it was actually a food and we needed to taste great. And when that happened we actually started to take off. But those moths flying over the broccoli and the extruable bread back then was when I started. And so what that meant is I always say about Stonyfield, we had a wonderful company back then we just said no supply and no demand. And that's really kind of the case. But since 2000 when the industry was really beginning to finally mature, not incidentally because we finally had federal standards. We had a unified standard although as you know it took a bit longer to get into commerce. But nevertheless we were at about 5.1 billion in 2000 in total sales. And in 2017 we were just shy of 50 billion. It's pretty clear that we crossed the 50 billion dollar mark the numbers will be out soon in 2018. So that's you need to understand that's a 14% compounded annual growth rate which in my terms and in my world the food business is unheard of. There's nothing out there that has grown at that consistent rate year after year and now decade after decade. Just last year Nielsen Insights, Kathleen was referencing Nielsen. But they reported that Organic was actually one of the top five sectors across the whole FMCG industry. And it was up 9% in dollar sales in retail last year. Again, extraordinary considering that most categories and I just spoke to 100 dairy farmers in Vermont last week. And I'm sure you're aware that commercial dairy is actually in decline right now. Organic is not, it's growing. But nonetheless almost all food categories are either flat or in slight decline. So to have had a 9% dollar growth last year is quite amazing. And that's no wonder that we have 82% of the US households now purchasing some organic products regularly. Now that report, the Nielsen report went on to show some other really interesting demographic trends which I don't think will be a surprise as I look around the room here. One is Hispanic consumers drove growth in terms of ethnic groups. Highest growth in household spending as well as the highest percentage of organic purchasing of any group. And obviously since this is the fastest growing demographic in America, this really bodes well for those of us in this space. And then likewise generationally millennials of course drove it. Fastest growth, highest percentage again. Currently now 25 to 26% of millennials have kids. And so within the next 10 to 15 years 80% are expected to become parents. That's about 60 million new organic consumers coming along. So again another good sign. I have three millennials, I'm sure a bunch of you do. And you know I can tell you that this is not a generation that needs to be lectured about climate change or toxins. They understand, and more than that they understand the power of their consuming dollar. Now it's also kind of interesting because they're the most debt ridden generation probably in history due to college and university costs and health care costs and so on. And yet they're still buying organic. But what they're doing, and I see it in my own family, but we also see it in our consumer trends. They're buying less of the more expensive items. So less frequent consumption of meat for example and dairy. But much more on the vegetable end of the spectrum and fruits, cereals, grains and of course plant-based alternatives that are exploding. In my category, cow milk just broadly, yogurt sales were down in the first quarter of 2019 by about $38 million versus a year ago. But plant-based alternatives are up by about $10 million for the same period. So there's definitely a shift happening and it is being driven by millennials. When Stonyfield looks at the consumer, we see a couple million consumers who buy our yo baby yogurt. Honestly most of our growth is in kids' lines these days. Adults is not growing anywhere near as fast. So we have a couple million consumers, moms primarily who buy. That's a subset of about four or five million moms who buy organic yogurt generally. Which is a subset of about 16 million moms who buy wellness products. And that can mean everything from non-GMO and we'll talk about that in a few minutes to whatever. It's obviously not a federal standard like we have with organic. But that's also a subset of 45 million moms who of course want the best for their children. So again, I think you can see why my wife calls me a pathological optimist. But you can see why I'm upbeat about the prospects for organic despite pesky reporters like the one last week. And I obviously agree with you Kathleen on this. Stonyfield was the very first organic company to sell the Walmart back. Nowadays I can't remember what year or anything happened anymore. I just try to remember which decade. So this was the early 90s. And as you might imagine, I took a lot of grief from my left especially in New England over that. Selling out to a big bad Walmart. But Walmart as I think most people know now is number one or two seller of organic produce in this country. And we sold the Walmart for the very reason Kathleen said is we didn't. Organic never set out to be food for the elite. And many, many people can only afford to buy at Walmart. And why shouldn't they have the same access? And plus of course the bigger the demand, the more the supply chain, the more the infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. But just to make one last point about millennials, the Pew research is showing 75% of millennials now willing to pay more for what they call sustainable offerings. And 66% are willing to pay more from companies committed to positive social and environmental practices. So this is a positive group for organic. Now I will tell you, we did a consumer intercept last year. And then we pooled data. At the end, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the Grow, the voluntary check off program that we're all engaged with here. And a particular group focused on the promotion side with organic voices, which I chair. And I gathered together about 20 chief marketing officers from all of the leading organic firms in the country to pool insights as we try to figure out, you know, we're one of the big problems in growing the organic sector has been caused by us. Because we're so passionate about all the many values and attributes of organic, we talk about all of them. And it overwhelms the poor consumer. And especially when you have a little yogurt label this big, you know, and you're jamming all those messages in. And it's, you know, carbon sequestration and farmer pay price and pesticide reductions and balance of trade. And, you know, all the things that we all believe and are excited about. So we pooled our insights and then we did some research and the millennial consumer that I'm spending a little time talking about here. And you'll understand why in a few minutes. We got three key insights from this group. One is abject, utter, not disrespect. What's the word I want to use? Distrust of institutions. Obviously government, but also companies. If a company talks, they don't listen. You know that skip ad thing that you get every time you on your phone? That button is the most pushed button, you know, in this age group. So number two is incredible confusion. What's the difference between organic and fair trade and regenerative and not? And I'm sure talk about that in the discussion. But the third and the real key is that absolute confidence that they can get whatever information they want and need right at their fingertips. And of course they can. Anybody who has a millennial kid knows they run circles. I mean, I'm constantly asking my kids, how do I do this and that? But the point is that, you know, that's for better and for worse, right? Because obviously data coming through the web is not always reliable. So what I want to say though is that broadly when you kind of look at these trends, you can see that even in tough categories like milk, like dairy, you know, last year white milk sales declined. Well actually over four years declined in 2013 to 2017 by over 70 million gallons. And in contrast, organic milk sales actually grew during that period. So you see even now it had about a 4.7% CAG are not as strong as organic in general. But still, obviously organic has favored and this is why the organic dairy farmers in my part of the world are doing a heck of a lot better than conventional farms. We are paying our organic farmers right now double the price right this quarter, double the price that conventional farmers are getting. And of course you can't make money on the price that they're getting for conventional. That's why we lost 13.5% of our conventional dairies last year. So what's behind the trends? You know, first, concern about chemicals in the food supply has never been greater. And you see it in all kinds of data of the more than a thousand American adults in the International Food Information Council Foundation's annual survey, the last four or five years, numbers between 34 and 36% said chemicals in food is the most important food safety issue. Even it's sort of trading places in 2015, it was outpacing foodborne illness from bacteria. Last year it was a close second. But anyways, the numbers have been up 13, 14, 15% annually. And why is that? Because what people are seeing in the media, because we're finally getting some science correlating these data. You know, back in 2007, the President's Cancer Panel announced that one in two men and one in three women were going to get cancer. American men and women were going to get cancer in our lifetimes. And they said that the primary cause is inadvertent exposure to chemicals in our everyday life. I mean, it was declared by this prestigious panel of oncologists. We now know that, you know, something north of 90%, thanks to EWG, 90% of conventional oats contain glyphosate. Even our spear drinkers are now in trouble. You saw the PERG study last month showing wines and beers, glyphosate. If you're drinking Jingdao beer, you might want to think twice. As you go down the list of glyphosate in parts per billion, there were virtually, I mean, essentially almost no beers were devoid of glyphosate because it's, as we now know, you know, roundup is everywhere. It's in the 90% to 100% of the rainfall in the Midwest during growing seasons. By the way, I have to say proudly, proud uncle, that I am the only beer in America that had, that was tested that had zero parts per billion of glyphosate. It's my nephew's beer, peak organic, so get yourself some peak organic. Do we have it here? Maybe not. Okay, all right, all right. Sorry. We won't go analyze who else is on the table over there. But look, we now know, again, EWG's pesticide analysis found pesticide residues nearly 70% of conventional produce tested strawberries now. I mean, this is the depressing part of the discussion. I'll move past this. But 99% of strawberries tested have pesticide residues, up to 22 different pesticides were found on one single strawberry. Environmental health perspectives last year, a series of studies saw a link between prenatal exposures to OP, organic phosphate pesticides, and lower IQ scores. We're literally making ourselves less intelligent. Exposure to common insecticides and pesticides published in this peer-reviewed journal in the womb showed that child IQ could be reduced by 4% to 7% before they reach school age in comparison to children with lower levels of exposure. On the last three years alone, we've seen research showing that working in conventional ag fields or even just living in areas near conventional farms can harm reproductive health, like respiratory illness in children, rheumatoid arthritis, coronary heart disease, renal disease, Parkinson's, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, et cetera, et cetera. So, again, this younger generation of consumers, we don't have to give that lecture anymore. They live this way. Everybody of this millennial age knows somebody with cancer. Most of us my age can't say that when we were their ages, but we certainly can now. And, lastly, just in terms of the sort of, you know, the stick part of this, and I'll get to the carrot in a moment. In March of 2018, there was a report, Exposures to Chemicals and Biomonitoring at CDC. They found that children 6 to 11 had significantly higher levels of residues in their urine of multiple pesticides than adults and even more worrisome chloroperifos and other OP insecticides were found in almost 99% of children tested at some level or another, whether you're in a farm belt or not. So, you know, I could go on with these, but you see this is what's happening and it's out there in the media and it's now being peer reviewed and, again, we have science correlating these concerns. So, we've got carrots as well. It's not all about sticks. You know, in animal care, which when you look at the drivers, if you go into consumer interception, you look at what's the driver of this whole plant-based explosion? Number one is humane treatment of animals or just simply not wanting to support animal agriculture. We know now, though, clinically that organically raised dairy cows live twice as long as conventional cows. So, if you're a dairy farmer, your prime asset lives twice as long. That's a pretty darn good thing. Which cow do you want to buy your milk from, right? And this is our vets and we, again, support almost 2,000 dairy farmers. The veterinarians are kind of like the Maytag salesman back in my days. You know, they just, literally, the animals don't get sick on these farms and when they do, they're usually quite treatable. But, again, published data, women reporting, reporting eating two or more servings per day of produce with higher pesticide residues. We're 26% likely to have a successful pregnancy or, in converse, those who are eating more regular organic were having more successful, less troubled pregnancies. And we also know that eating an organic not only helps to avoid exposure but we also know that when kids switch to an organic diet, it doesn't take long before the metabolites of pesticides disappear from their urine. Three to six-year-olds, literally in one week, can purge their systems just by eating. And recently, I'm sure you all saw the study that showed the pesticide levels in families dropping by 60% after one week of eating organic foods. So some of these studies are subjective and they absolutely should be criticized. The French study, which was published in JAMA, to be clear, that followed 70,000 adults for five years. Nevertheless, and most of them women, and again, it was subjective, you had to check off whether you were eating organic food. It was not statistical, but nonetheless, the consumers who checked off eating organic food regularly had 25% fewer cancers than those without. This is what's out there now and this is what's driving a lot of this. So you've got the sort of, you know, the positives and, like I say, the sticks and the carrots. But we also know organic milk has 62% more omega-3 fatty acids for those, for whom that's an issue. We know that organic crops have higher antioxidant levels. And so we do have now a body of data, unlike when I was, you know, starting out and it was just kind of aspirational and revolutionary and all of those things that Kathleen was describing. So just to kind of wrap up so we can get to the discussion, let me just say that, you know, I'm bullish, obviously. I see great things happening in the sector. And I see it really only going our way. It's now 5.4% of U.S. food more, I think. Is that the number? And, you know, we're aiming for double-digit and I think we're certainly going to see it in my lifetime and with good reasons. But, you know, let me just talk to the challenges and I'd like to just kind of get to several key points that I think we must address in organic and then we'll have a discussion. You know, the first is as a business person, as a brand, as a processor, my job is to make sure that I'm balancing the benefits to the farmer and the benefits to the consumer. I have to make sure both are benefiting. And right now that's tough because I've got a long waiting list of conventional farmers trying to convert to organic because they can't make it. And when your average age is 58 years old as a dairy farmer and you're seeing your price caving in, I mean, I literally have farmers, you know, in tears talking to me quite regularly because they don't see their kids being able to continue their fourth, fifth, sixth generation farm. But we can't take the milk right now because we have right now, as I said, you know, organic's growing but not growing as it used to. So, you know, my job then is to serve the farmers. I have to be, I have to win on taste because I've got to get to that, remember the 45 million, not the four. I have to get to the next group to help the farmers. I've got to be the most convenient. My pricing has to be reasonable and within some reach. You know, when I, I must say, you know, when I see that post article and the many that come out always attacking organic, I wonder when somebody's going to write the article about what's going on with conventional dairy farming and why we're not supporting our family farmers and why my competitors, why Chobani and Yoplay are getting away with paying farmers less than what it costs them to actually produce and putting these farmers at great risk. And you know how they're making it. They're making it by, they're living off their depreciation. Conventional farmers are not painting their barns, they're not taking care of their fences, their equipment is old and so forth. Organic dairy farmers are the only ones actually able to make a profit. They're able to sell them as it is. They're still able to make it. And we need to, you know, take a bigger scope here and shine a light on what's going on out there. But in order, you know, this challenge is, if you're following what I'm saying here, as a processor, I'm paying 100% more for milk, which is my primary cost. But my, I can't charge 100% more for my cup or my tube or my drink or my, you know, pouch of yogurt, right? So I've got to balance to the, to make sure the consumer is getting a price. So that's a tough, tough balancing act. And, you know, the growth of organic, every retailer in America will tell you, it's, again, top three, top four, top five. And we just came back from Natural Products Expo West where every major grocer in America, you know, from Walmart to Kroger and Target and Costco and obviously all the natural foods, the co-ops and so forth were there. And they'll tell you, this is where the growth is and that's why they were there as the never before. But, you know, because of this growth and then the growth in capital, because it's an absolute explosion of venture capital in our space, there's now a lot larger companies and retailers, and that means they do bring this more traditional approach to business than might have been common in, you know, when I was starting out. But they bring huge advantages because of scale. There's all kinds of efficiencies that come from LMS or Denon or Lactalis or a Kroger or a Costco or in the space. And what I often explain to my farmers is look, I'm going to try to support your price but I need to cluster around a root because I need to get my transportation costs low. That way I don't penalize you but I can be efficient. Well, that's what happens with scale. And there's a hundred examples of scale that of course we all could understand. But this increased competition in the marketplace and the increased return on investment challenges because there's so much money coming in and some of the valuations I'll be the first to tell you and I benefited from them but they're absurd, right? Three, four times top line sales that these venture VCs and large strategic are putting in. But that makes it, it puts a lot more pressure on the marketplace and it puts a lot more pressure on price. And so again you have this balancing act all the time. And of course retailers also I just should say are also under huge pressure because Ecom is now such a big part of the overall marketplace but especially in organic. You can now get an organic Kiwi brought to your home in the same day. So what's happening with us in the space as we try to do this juggling act between the supplier and the consumer is we're also having the second highest cost in my business going up which is trade spending. Which is the gap between the list price and the actual what we actually get. In other words what you have to spend on in-store on slotting fees and promotion and so on and so forth. You know you can't play in the retailers this is the money is there for them to get they need it because it's so competitive but it does put pressure on us. So I just want you to have a sort of a sense of what the challenges are. So just to wrap up there are five areas I feel that we as an organic community and industry need to prioritize as we think about building a strong future on the future for organic. One and obviously this is not the crowd I need to preach this to. We've got to keep the bar high on organic. It's the strangest industry honestly it's the only one I know in the world that's fought for more government regulation. But we need it because once we had a federal standard that's when our industry took off. Once you could say with credibility and with enforcement that there is a there there as opposed to a lot of these other standards that you know don't there's no I mean the word natural means exactly nothing there's ice creams out there that don't change shape when they melt but they say natural on the label right and you know we're dealing with this with regenerative and so on. I mean I told Kathleen when I came in here at the Natural Products Expo there was a corn chip that had Butterfinger on the inside Butterfinger candy. Now why it was there I'm not exactly sure I still need an answer. I said non-GMO on the label but it wasn't the butterfly it wasn't the certified inspected non-GMO it was just some words and this is why young people don't trust us because we're you know it's obviously pure bull I'm anyways I digress but we need to keep our regulation strong and we've got to fix them we're needed and we've got to hold all farmers and processors to the same high bar. Now the 2018 Farm Bill for Organic contains new provisions to help USDA fight fraud especially in imports and Stonyfield's also participating in the new organic fraud prevention program launched by OTA which is exceptional and needed and important and we're getting more and more companies signing up. In organic dairy there's two really major areas where enforcement is needed. The first is on this origin of livestock rule I don't know how many of you understand this but we can get into it in the discussion if you want but bottom line is we need a firm rule. Farmers can grow their calves elsewhere on non-organic feed and then bring them onto the farm for a year so they can get this loophole allows for really getting away with much lower costs and of course it brings cynicism and you know is this really an organic calf and so on and so forth and we just need a final rule it's very simple we're asking the USDA to help get this done and when it happens it will solve the problem once there's a rule. The second area where more consistent enforcement is really needed is the pasture rule I think you're aware consumers expect organic dairy operations to be grazing their cows and the regulations require but we don't have great data on compliance quite frankly there's tons of anecdotes lots of rumors and there's always some article flashing out there saying you know these folks don't put them on pasture and we we need to make sure all certifiers who inspect organic dairies are trained to look at that a lot of the inspectors aren't dairy people you know if you're a dairy person you can go and you can pretty much figure out if the cows are on grass or not but it's so we need better training we need better data and obviously enforcement now I won't go off into the CAFOs and organic but we could talk about that if you want but again there are you know this the organic livestock and poultry practices rule also is it's been withdrawn it needs to come back this OTA is in fact suing the USDA to force implementation of the rule we have a pretty high bar for animal welfare in organics but again I listened to an earful with the farmers last Thursday there's some you know with larger scale CAFO type operations not necessarily complying and again the lack of the new rule allows on even enforcement you know that may vary from region to region inspector to inspector we need that to we need that to be fixed second area and the others I'll be quick research research is our life blood research on organic production practices breeding for crops livestock animal health understanding the benefit the environmental benefits of organic we're getting some good data out there but obviously you know comparing runoff and nitrogen migration and so forth we're doing a lot of that at UNH's organic dairy in New Hampshire and there's other leaders around the country but we need more and again the farm bill this was a big win for us you know the funding for the organic research extension initiative was raised to 50 million dollars annually by 2022 and it's also secure so that the next time if the farm bill gets stalled we don't have to start with zero again which is you know heaven honestly it's absolutely essential and then we have this checkoff program this voluntary checkoff program which is really exciting we didn't get approval from the USDA to pursue the proceed with the mandatory checkoff but the voluntary which will cover research funding self funded we'll right now our focus is technical assistance and training for farmers transitioning with organic grain production in an effort to increase domestic grain production which reduce our reliance and imports but there's a lot of research priorities that we hope to self fund third I know I don't have to belabor this it's just supporting the next gen of organic farmers organic farmers are no different than conventional average farmer age 58 years old average that right and so in New Hampton New in Maine we Stonyfield and others have funded this Wolfsnack Wolfsnack Center we have organic dairy farm apprentices on the farms we had a farmer tip over his tractor last winter and had a life threatening injury and one of the apprentices stepped right off the apprenticeship program and ran his farm for the rest of the winter this is really exciting and we have some master grazers up there and we have some real opportunities to grow that next gen need more funding for it but it's really powerful on the fourth is consumer education and obviously you know educating consumers about the science the data the verifiable credible real stuff is key we know consumers are really confused when it comes to the meaning of organic certification and you know we've been addressing this for a really long time we find influencers and bloggers are one of our most powerful ways of doing this oh can I grab that slide yeah so this is a fun little piece of media that the OTA put out last fall you may have seen this ad in the Wall Street Journal as I mentioned before I'm now chairing a group that has 90 companies in it as part of the grow program where the organic voices where the promotion program and we've just sort of picked up on that ad and said look with all the circular firing squad stuff and all the attacks out there this is not debatable that these 700 chemicals are prohibited we're not saying whether they're present or not because again without testing of every last product of every you can't but this is there are 700 reasons to go with organic and you'll be seeing this campaign rolling out we rolled it out at Expo to great great joy for a lot of folks there except for the non-organic folks but certainly great for the organic people but it's you know this is crucial for us to be educating what organic is and what organic isn't and I want to stress what it isn't you know we're not saying organic is residue free because you can't when glyphosates in 90% of your rainfall you know you can't say your residue free although my nephew's beer can anyhow the last thing and I'll just close on this I was in New Hampshire the last couple days and as you might imagine you're now bumping into presidential candidates on every street corner it's I mean you could literally meet three a day if you want up there and yesterday I did and but unlike other campaigns and I've lived there my whole life they're all talking about climate change and it's really refreshing you know we're not debating the science now I mean some are but these folks aren't but you know we know climate change prevents a real threat to agriculture around the world I'm running an organic farm in New Zealand where we just had the worst drought you know the fires in California we have the opposite in Northern New England we've had flooding fields are going to be under for a long time this spring and so the weather's becoming really unpredictable and that's really tough on farming of all sorts so you know we need to act fast in this society but we do know that organic has it's a major contribution a study in 2017 by the organic center Northeastern University found that organic systems are storing 26% more carbon on average than conventional which of course is the point of organic right building soil we need to be promoting this and we need to be growing it for this reason this really my actual academic background is in climate science and you know I don't think it's debatable but there's no way we're going to reverse slow or reverse climate change without taking carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it and that's what organic does so that for me would be the fifth priority so I've yacked at you long enough I think we're going to just have some discussion and some questions so thank you so this is Kathleen Merrigan again and I have the privilege of interviewing a fairly new young farmer and she is up in Idaho and I want her to begin by telling us a little bit about her operation to situate the conversation yeah great thanks Kathy for having me me and my husband Simon Neely run Lookout Farm in the Wood River Valley in Central Idaho we're kind of nestled between Boise and Twin Falls and near the Sun Valley area the farm currently is just four acres of vegetable production we grow everything that's possible in this climate which is a sort of high desert map and region so it's not the most obvious place to grow vegetables but actually a lot can be done here so we are very focused right now on serving our local community through a lot of the traditional marketing channels of farmers markets supported agriculture subscription program and also through our local restaurants and some wholesale clients in our very immediate region we have hopes to expand to be able to serve more of our broader region and be part of kind of a really robust regional food system so we're in our second year of production so we're just getting to know our land and know our community and through the farm and it's a really exciting challenging time but yeah I'm really excited to have this conversation so I am on Zoom with you but I am situated in Arizona and in Arizona we think a lot about water we're a very thirsty state and I don't think it's rained here in a month it's just very semi-arid I'm wondering in your farming situation are you thinking a lot about water how does water play out in your world oh absolutely we are in the arid west so we should all be thinking about water and water is very political and it's very physical so there's a lot of dimensions of that one thing I'll mention is that we've converted our farm from a traditional grass and alfalfa hay field and in that conversion we're reducing the amount of water that we're using by about 10 fold to grow vegetables so we see that as a positive I mean hay has a alfalfa as a great plant and has really is actually pretty water efficient but overall it uses a lot of water and that system is kind of there for not the most reasonable incentives there's sort of strange incentives around alfalfa production people just needing to use their water right so we're taking kind of a critical lens to that and we use a lot of drip irrigation when possible and that reduces water a lot but also we have a broader kind of ecosystem here that we're also managing water on but a wild undanned river so there's a lot of dimensions to how we are thinking about water both as far as the system and then also as a resource but it's really important I think as a small farm to be very cognizant that and in a year like this year we're really aware that that water that we've been using and used to might not always be there so preparing for the future as far as more likelihood of drought is really important so I'm really interested that you decided to become a farmer that's against trends you know here in the United States not everyone may understand this but we're in a serious situation with out migration from rural communities young people leaving the farm leaving the ranch not wanting to carry on older generations not knowing where to transition their working lands to the next generation and so we're really kind of tough but one of the things I'm very interested in is organic seems to be the outlier to the extent that young people are coming into farming a lot of people are going organic so anyhow I'm just curious why you and your husband have decided to take this path and how organic plays into that thinking yeah so I would say maybe we're crazy because it's not easy so but we I think have always felt that agriculture is a real realm of sort of intellectual exploration it's an amazing ground for social movement a place to engage with your community in ways that other career opportunities or maybe small businesses that we would start don't offer so I think we really love plants and the process of every year having this new experiment and then we love the fact that we can connect with our community through food and share the farm with them so intimately you know my husband writes a newsletter every week to our farm members and includes a recipe and he shares some little window of the farm and you know we get so much sort of surprising positive feedback about that people are like I don't know what I love more the food or the writing so that's a real emotional piece is really I think important and it shouldn't be undervalued of just of what a privilege it is to be in this position as a farmer and growing food for people in your community but you know the challenges are real for new beginning farmers we are in a privileged position but most people have a really hard time access to land access to knowledge neither of us came from farming backgrounds or farming families so maybe that was what allowed us to be kind of blind enough to jump into this but I think that's pretty common these days but in that context with such challenges of access to land we really have to think about who is and who isn't included in agriculture and who has the potential to get engaged in that conversation who we're kind of missing out on because we have this traditional notion of who's a farmer in America and we need all the voices and all the innovation now so that's something we think about and think about what our farm can do as far as promoting in a more regional way who has access to the kind of land and lifestyle that we're trying to build here so those are some of the reasons but I think you know it's year 2 so we'll see we both have had prior experience and had started a small farm in California right out of college and kind of always knew that we wanted to get back to it if we had the chance so I've seen studies that say half of millennials consider themselves foodies and I imagine that is also true of Gen Xers at least as a university professor that's my overall feeling of things so why is it that your generation younger people generally are so food focused these days yeah you know I don't have the answer to that and I almost take a little bit of issue with the word foodie and it almost I'd be resistant to be as described that way even though I know that it's probably true for me and what I see with my community my friends it's about having this base connection to something so fundamental in your life and having this realm to experiment and do things that are physical with your hands and your senses and connect to the land in a way that are very disconnected from otherwise so I see it as an outlet for that kind of creative cultural expression that we've kind of been missing out on because of other changes socially so I don't know if that explains everybody's attraction to it but I see that in my sort of immediate community and then I think that there is also just an awareness of how important food is on so many dimensions of our sort of social challenges and climate to social justice water use etc etc everybody has to eat and this is a realm in which we can address a lot of our biggest issues so at any scale whether it's in your own kitchen or whether you're running a farm or working on a farm it gives you kind of access to that in a really real concrete way well I know now the organic market in the US and we're the largest global market the organic trade association said it was a $55.1 billion market in 2019 about 6% of the food supply in the US sold in about 75% of groceries but with that demand there needs to be more supply and we've been importing when we could be growing homegrown organic so I just want to say you're in year 2 it takes 3 years across the finish line for organic certification and I want to thank you for having this conversation and cheer you and your husband on because we need people like you in American agriculture I wish you the best of luck I appreciate it and yeah we'll take that to heart because we need all the encouragement we can get so thank you enjoy the conversation hello again and thanks for tuning in to our long discussion about organic agriculture particularly as it's evolving in the United States my bottom line message we're very excited by the potential organic agriculture has in this country as well as globally well to recap some of what you've already heard we think organic is very good for climate you have requirements for crop rotations cover crops and other soil building measures that are so critical to soil sequestration we know that the soil health that is built with organic production systems creates a kind of resiliency very important in the face of extreme climate events we're certainly seeing those events now globally sadly and a lot of people wonder well can organic really produce the yields that are necessary to feed a growing world population and we're finding from studies that have come out recently that yes organic can and especially when you get in the resiliency factor in extreme weather events organic yields in many cases are higher we also know that organic requires animals to have access to outdoors and for ruminants to be given access to pasture which is very very meaningful in terms of reducing methane production which of course is very potent situation for climate so organic is good for climate we believe we know we have the studies to prove it that organic is good for economic and social development organic creates jobs across the supply chain in the US there's studies done on organic hotspots counties that have above average number of organic operations and clusters of counties where we see higher employment lower poverty just better economic indicators all together and we also know that in this time of COVID-19 that there's increase in sales of organic as people are returning home and being home cooks and that consumers are really looking to purchase food items locally and the connection between organic and local is very tight and it really brings a resiliency to for local and regional food systems finally we know that organic is good for human health and animal health there's a radical reduction in the use of synthetic toxic chemicals such as pesticides it is critical for people who are working in farming communities particularly vulnerable populations like farm workers but even children and pregnant women who are living in rural communities their exposure to these toxicants has been shown to be very very detrimental over time we know that we have a problem with antibiotic resistance and the prohibition in the US standards on use of antibiotics in any kind of meat and poultry that's labeled as organic has really gone a long ways not just to reducing farmers use of antibiotics but also putting these farmers in the forefront of innovating ways to go without a regular dose of antibiotics that had become so so common across the way we produce meat animals so the list around why organic could go on and on at the Arizona State University Swedish Center for Sustainable Food Systems we're looking and we know that we're on the cusp of the 30th anniversary of our national law that set up a labeling program standards for organic food that happens November 4th it happens to be the day after our big presidential election I don't know if everyone's going to be focused on the 30th anniversary of the organic goods production act on that particular day but we know that it's a time to think deeply about organic did not just look backwards but also look forward to think about how this sector can improve global food production and we think that there's all kinds of opportunities we hope that you stay tuned to learn more about our research into hear more about our policy prescriptions to remove some of the barriers that organic market players face so thanks very much I hope you have a good meeting conclusion take two thanks for turning thanks for turning in I hope you enjoyed hearing from Gary Hirschberg what an incredible entrepreneur and our young farmer Brianna sweetie who along with her husband are bravely setting forth and putting together a new organic farm to serve their community and what I loved about what Brianna had to say was that connection to community and why she's chosen this line of work so as we conclude this hour I just want to say that there are a lot of reasons to think about organic agriculture as a one more time hi there thanks for wasn't Brianna sweetie great I love the connection she draws between being an organic farmer and being an active passionate community member concerned about inclusivity and the success of the people that she helps feed she inspires me this young woman who wants to go into American agriculture wants to be an organic farmer when I know very well there are a lot of barriers we need people like Brianna we need entrepreneurs like Gary Hirschberg who just gave a marvelous presentation I just want to say at the close of the hour that at Arizona State University the Swedish Center for Sustainable Food Systems we're all in on organic agriculture we think it has great potential first we know organic is good for climate I'm probably telling you what you already know but I want to just do a recap really important requirements for soil health crop rotation the cornerstone of organic agriculture really important for soil health cover crops all kinds of requirements in the organic plan to make sure that soil at the heart of organic is building strength and that strength is so important to resiliency and the face of extreme weather events my goodness we're seeing so many of those globally right now it's heartbreaking and we know for more recent research that organic yields actually are competitive and may oftentimes outcompete conventional production because these organic fields become so resilient and then there's a whole issue of livestock organic standards require that ruminants be given access to pasture and that reduces methane production one of the most potent greenhouse gases that we must reduce so for all of those reasons and more that I won't elaborate we know that organic is good for climate we also know that organic is good for community again you heard Breonna's passionate conversation but we have studies in the US on what we call organic hotspots where there's a cluster of counties with a higher than average number of organic operations and we see that all the economic indicators for those counties are better than others so lower unemployment lower poverty there's some sort of correlations there that really require more study but the connection between organic and rural health is really quite astounding we also know that there's a lot of overlap between what is organic and what is local and particularly in this time of the pandemic people are really looking to buy local and organic contributes to building those local and regional food systems that everyone craves finally we know that organic is good for human health and for animal health so the restrictions on toxic chemicals, pesticides are really very very important those pesticides end up in our groundwater they end up in our bloodstream and particularly for people who are working on the farm especially vulnerable farm workers this is really a great stride forward when you restrict these agrochemicals we also know that the restrictions on antibiotic use are very important now we're facing Covid and everyone's thinking about what could be the next pandemic the next virus and what are the tools that we can look at to protect the world from these different kinds of attacks on our bodies and antibiotics have been such an incredible tool that has helped the health of so many and yet we've abused these antibiotics by using them pro-valactically in animal production organic doesn't allow that and it will extend the life of antibiotics even more critically because antibiotics are not allowed it's put our organic farmers and ranchers in the forefront of being researchers to figure out how to go without and all the best practices that then can be emulated by farmers of all kinds so my list could go on and on but I just want you to know that we're going to be working in this area we think it's really important the 30th anniversary of the law that established organic food standards for our country is November 4th happens to be the day after our presidential election it may not be top of mind for everybody there may be some other things to talk about I don't know but for us it's an opportunity to look backward historically and look forward and think about how this organic sector can grow and really make a difference in the ability that we all care about thanks for tuning in