When Eliot Coleman began growing vegetables on the acidic, rocky soils of coastal Brooksville in the late 1960s, introducing himself as an organic farmer earned suspicious looks. Members of the young movement were often seen as unscientific or backward.
Today, he’s a famed author and advocate for building soil with organic matter to grow without pesticides year round, and this country’s organic food sector is worth nearly $70 billion.
As the organic movement grows into an increasingly valuable industry and national standards are adopted, ideological and political disagreements are being raised about what an “organic” label can, or should, certify.
Most organic farms are certified by the United States Department of Agriculture, which established a program in 2002 to standardize what regional organizations, including the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, developed beginning in the 1970s.
The USDA has since allowed hydroponic farms, or ones that grow produce in water, and “confined animal feeding operations” — commonly known as factory farms, which give animals little or no access to pasture — to be certified organic.
To many small growers who see “organic” as a complete system that focuses on soil health and animal welfare, that’s a betrayal of what the word means. One way they’re pushing back is by adding a certification from the Real Organic Project, which evaluates them with stricter standards and openly opposes the USDA’s practices.
Real Organic, which did not respond to an interview request, also maintains that the USDA isn’t enforcing its own soil fertility standards.
A spokesperson for the USDA said the organization stands by its federal standards, which are developed through a “robust” public comment process balancing the interests of consumers and producers.
In Maine, 59 farms are listed on Real Organic Project’s directory, out of more than 1,000 nationwide.
For farmers like Coleman, it’s an effort to defend the integrity of their farming methods and the word that defines them as powerful corporate farms enter the industry. If they don’t, buyers might not know if their food was grown in a way they support.
Independent organizations can certify farms to the national standards, but interpret them differently. MOFGA Certification Services, an LLC owned by the larger nonprofit, has a stricter approach than in other regions of the country and continues to advocate for strengthening the USDA requirements, according to Sarah Alexander, executive director of MOFGA. It doesn’t certify hydroponics or factory farms.
MOFGA also joined the Real Organic Project in a 2021 lawsuit against the USDA to challenge hydroponic growing. The suit was dismissed, but more litigation may follow.
“Certified organic, at its core, is really about looking at the whole system,” Alexander said.
She said that’s increasingly important as farmers respond to climate change. For example, the more organic matter soil contains, the less likely it is to wash away when it rains and the more water it can hold onto during drought.
For Jenny Minard and John Roscoe, who grow vegetables at Wild Tilth Farm in Sullivan, getting Real Organic Project labeling was simple. Their farming practices already met the project standards, which Minard said is likely the case for many other small organic growers.
“If the USDA can’t be trusted to be stewards of what the organic label means, what it actually stands for, then we need add-on labels like [Real Organic Project] so that busy people can know that certain farms have gone above and beyond what the USDA requires to be considered organic,” Minard said.
Passionate disagreements about organic standards aren’t new, and neither is advocacy from Maine. More than 20 years ago, a Hartford blueberry farmer sued the USDA for allowing amounts of non-organic materials in certified foods and won, though a federal bill later canceled out its effects.
Since then, the industry has grown significantly. Organic food sales increased about 8 percent each year from 2011 to 2021, according to the USDA. In 1990, sales totaled $1 billion. In 2023, sales hit a record breaking $69.7 billion, the Organic Trade Association found.
The amount of USDA-certified organic farmland in the country more than doubled between 2000 and 2021, reaching 4.8 million acres.
That’s a far cry from the early days of the organic movement, according to Coleman.
He never certified his Four Season Farm, not trusting the USDA, and as a result it didn’t bear the Real Organic Project label, which is structured as an add-on to that certification.
But he believes in preserving the integrity of what “organic” means, and sits on the project’s advisory board. Maine growers will uphold those standards, he said, but he’s not optimistic about the national level and the powerful, well-funded interests that now lobby there.
“There is no way that food grown in a nutrient solution in a plastic tank could ever begin to duplicate the nutritional benefit of a food grown in a truly fertile soil, with all of the known and unknown qualities that that fertile soil puts into the food,” he said.
Coleman’s advice is to buy from local farmers who you know use practices you support.
The national standards board meets regularly to consider changes, and Alexander said MOFGA will continue to be a watchdog.
