As the Agriculture Department and farmers have watched the organics industry boom, the agency is working to find a middle ground between the needs of conventional and organic farmers.
Initially reluctant to embrace the idea of sanctioning organics under a USDA label, the agency has started to view organics “like its own commodity,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said earlier this year.
“There is a growing market for these products and they demand a higher price, so it’s incumbent on USDA to understand this opportunity,” Vilsack told a meeting of the Organic Trade Association in May.
But as the agency embraces organics, and recognizes the role they could play in boosting rural communities, it also has to consider that 18,000 organic producers are dwarfed by 2.2 million other farmers, most of whom grow or depend on genetically modified crops.