“A shift is needed in how we invest in our agri-food sector to protect Canada’s domestic food supply, and ensure sufficient, appropriate, and accessible food for all,” the Canadian Organic Trade Association (COTA) said in an email to members on Monday.

COTA launched an online petition on April 2 sponsored by NDP MP Alistair MacGregor.

The petition says that Canadian consumers are driving strong demand for organic food, and asks the federal government to establish policies and programs to “encourage growth in the domestic supply of organic to meet the market opportunity,” and to “meaningfully recognize and incentivize sustainable resilient food systems, such as organic, across all departments that relate to Canadian food policy.”

The petition needs at least 500 signatures to be presented to the House of Commons. On Wednesday morning, petition e-4909 had 596 signatures.

In September, national organic groups launched a national organic action plan, which included a push for greater support through federal policy and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s work.

At the time, COTA executive director Tia Loftsgard said that while the federal government provides some funding for organic research and developing export strategies, overall support is “nominal.”

“We get lost in the fold,” she told the Manitoba Co-operator.

This petition supports some of the objectives behind the national organic plan, Loftsgard said in an email yesterday.
While petitions rarely result in immediate policy change, Loftsgard said they can be an effective tool to keep a topic front-of-mind in the House of Commons.

“This petition provides us another forum to talk about the needs of the organic sector with consumers and government and in the broader context of the Organic Action Plan,” Loftsgard said. “It also allows supporters of organic to add their voice to our advocacy efforts and to showcase to their Members of Parliament the broad support for organic across the nation.”

People can sign the petition until May 2.

The post Organic group send petition to federal government appeared first on Farmtario.

For the first time in more than a decade of monitoring the U.S. marketplace, analyst Tom Barnes said the total volume of organic produce sold decreased in 2022 from the previous year. He attributed this to the “substitution” of organic with non-organic options by “fence-sitters” who felt they could no longer justify the organic premium.

Why it matters: Costs of inputs needed by organic farmers have risen over the past year and it may be difficult for them to pass those increases on to consumers.

Barnes gave the latest retail numbers for organic produce during a Jan. 24 session entitled “Rest, Recovery and Regeneration: How has the pandemic affected organic and what does the future hold?” He reviewed COVID-19’s effects on the sector — including more questions about what makes foods healthy — and assessed 2022’s less-than-stellar returns, noting 2023 could yield similar results.

Inflation isn’t the only post-COVID factor affecting the organic marketplace. In an afternoon session, crop commodity specialists from the U.S. and Canada outlined the 2023 market outlook and agreed it will continue to be a “rollercoaster.”

Ryan Koory of U.S.-based organic market analysis firm Mercaris cited unusual growth in demand for organic commodities at the beginning of the pandemic. This was tied to the sudden return to home-prepared meals and increased awareness about health. It continued into 2021, although home preparation shifted to healthy grab-and-go options like packaged beverages, fresh produce and snacks.

Since then, there were two successive poor growing seasons for organic wheat and the U.S. eliminated an equivalency agreement with India. That drastically reduced soybean imports from what had been a major supplier.

Demand for soybeans remained high for months because they were needed to offset wheat in livestock rations but highly pathogenic avian influenza soon cut demand considerably. Other livestock producers began to look elsewhere for protein options due to elevated soybean prices.

As a result, 2021-22 was the first year in recent memory that the U.S. entered a crop year with significant carryover stocks of organic soybeans. The carryover looks to be even greater for 2022-23.

“We anticipate we’re going to lose as much as 80,000 acres of organic soy over the next growing season,” Koory said. That’s a 24 per cent decrease compared to last year’s U.S. acreage if the prediction proves true.

Ontario organic consultant Hugh Martin noted Canadian soybean growers have benefitted from prices that rose from around $30 per bushel in the pre-COVID period to as high as the mid-$40s or even $50 per bushel in recent months. Now he’s concerned about how Koory’s predictions might unfold north of the border.

North American organic corn may have a better future, in large part due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Koory reported there was an 80 per cent increase in the amount of organic corn crossing from Canada into the U.S. in 2021-22 compared to the previous year.

Black Sea nations are among the other main suppliers to the U.S. market – either directly, or more often through Turkey, where the corn is cracked and shipped.

The war has been an obvious impediment to the Black Sea supply chain. But Koory noted the organic marketplace has a further complication in the form of inspection and certification.

“The ability of organic certifiers to work within the environment that’s currently what we’re seeing in Ukraine has been incredibly difficult,” he said.

But as Barnes reported, inflation is the dominant factor affecting organic food sales at the grocery store.

For the first time in eight years, conventional produce increased in dollar-value sales in 2022 by a greater degree than organic produce, he said. The total volume of organic produce sold was down for the first time he can remember.

Price inflation in the U.S. was actually greater, on average, for conventional options in 2022 than it was for organics – at 9.2 per cent compared to 7.1 per cent. But with organic starting out at a significant premium, it’s still considerably more expensive.

And “the consumer is really concerned about their budget,” Barnes said.

Lynsey Walker of the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) concurred, citing an early 2022 survey of 2,000 Canadian grocery consumers. Though the survey was conducted just before much of the media hype about inflation, there was awareness among the average consumer and what she identified as the subset of “super wellness consumers” that organic food is significantly more expensive – even if, for some products, the price spread isn’t large.

Walker said inflationary effects in all aspects of their lives “have (consumers) evaluating price more than they ever have before.”

She added that the CHFA survey revealed the value placed by consumers on an “organic” label has faltered in recent years and is being replaced, to a degree, by labels with fair trade, humane certified and natural.

She suggested the sector emphasize that products meeting organic standards also typically meet standards in some other label programs.

Barnes said the challenges presented by inflation shouldn’t necessarily mean organic producers and marketers should lower the price gap between conventional and organic. It costs more to meet organic standards, he said, and farmers and processors shouldn’t force themselves into loss positions in reaction to what he believes is a short-term trend.

“We haven’t had a normal year in quite some time but this is an anomaly. It isn’t going to stay where it is forever.”

The post Inflation remains top of mind for organic marketers appeared first on Farmtario.

The marketing webinars, which are held bi-annually before spring seeding and after harvest, are designed to connect organic grain buyers and producers as well as provide information on pricing and contract information to each other.

Representatives answered from a list of questions handed out before the start of the webinar, which ranged from crop needs to dockage allowances to trucking to market predictions for 2023. The webinar was moderated by SaskOrganics board secretary and former Western Producer contributor Will Oddie. All 10 companies which took part in the webinar also sponsored the event.

Dwayne Lee, a Winnipeg-based general manager of Growers’ International Organic Sales Inc. (GIOSI), said wheat yields this year were much higher than in the drought year of 2021, but carryout will remain small.

“Supplies are maybe not largely different year-by-year,” he said. “The (organic) market feels generally pretty balanced…I would say it feels we’re a little bit rangebound. Not overly bearish, not overly bullish.”

Clarence Shwaluk, director of farm operations for Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods, said “traceability”, which allows a grain buyer to know where the crop came from, is a strong selling feature. However, finding the right price for consumers can be challenging.

“We do try to follow commodity pricing. We do realize that being a specialty crop, we want to make sure that hemp returns a little bit more per acre than some of the more common crops that are grown out there organically,” he said. “We’re just about to finalize (our price), but we do need to realize our retailers are pushing back, as well.”

Mike Gallais, director of procurement and general manager of the Avena Foods pulse processing plant in Rowatt, Sask., believes there is “stability” in organic markets for 2023.

“In other years, some of our green pea customers would start taking peas in December or later, but they’ve been actually pulling since September. So we’re seeing good demand,” he said.

Ben Howrigan, a Vermont-based salesperson from F.W. Cobs Company, mentioned that rail movement has been slower than in previous years and echoed Gallais’ sentiment of stability despite a high U.S. dollar.

“It was kind of a mixed bag of a (soybean) crop in Saskatchewan. The demand still seems pretty high for corn and beans, which with the prices being where they are always creates a lot more demand for small grains to kind of supplement the rations as well. That’s why we’re seeing the barley and rye and demand for wheat as well,” Howrigan explained.

Alex Galarneau, owner and operator of Prairie Heritage Seeds (PHS) in Radville, Sask., said it was a “good crop year” in Western Canada with organic crop prices still high despite coming off last spring’s levels. He said 80 per cent of PHS’s grain is exported outside Canada with a low Canadian dollar keeping prices high. However, a high U.S. dollar is also raising freight costs, while supply chain concerns and labour shortages remain pertinent.

“Overall, we’re working through it and we’re finding a way,” Galarneau said. “My standard line is, ‘Put your sunglasses on, because the future’s still bright.’”

Other participants in the webinar were Carolyn Crawford of Mumm’s Sprouting Seeds located near Parkside, Sask., Bailey Ogilvie from Scoular Canada, Ken Richmond of O&T Farms based in Regina, Bill Longman from Sunrise Foods International and Kelly Cornelius from Grain Millers Inc.

The post Webinar reveals thoughts on present, future of organic markets appeared first on Farmtario.

The European Commission has approved the first slate of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) strategic plans submitted by seven member states.

The plans submitted by Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Poland and Portugal will guide agricultural policy in those countries for the 2023-27 period.

Why it matters: By increasing organic acreage, the EU will be less productive agriculturally, according to analysts.

“We are now one step closer to implementing a new CAP for the next five years,” EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said in a news release announcing the approval of the first seven plans.

The commission is committed to the quick approval of the 21 remaining plans, which are supposed to be in place before Jan. 1.

The goal of the new CAP is to support the transition to sustainable agriculture. One key target is to have one-quarter of the EU’s farmland certified organic by 2030.

IFOAM Organics Europe, the umbrella organization for organic food and farming, says member states are well off target on achieving that goal but there will still be a massive increase in organic farming based on comments made by the commission in its press release.

“Substantial funding will support the development of organic production, with most countries aiming to double or even triple their (organic) farming area,” it stated.

For instance, France intends to double its area under organic farming to reach 18 per cent of total agricultural area by 2027. Spain’s plan calls for 20 per cent of its farmland to be organic by 2030.

Branden Leslie, manager of policy and government relations with Grain Growers of Canada, said the timing of this EU initiative is unfortunate because the world needs all the food it can get right now.

“The reality is that organic production simply has lower yields than conventional farming,” he said. “I don’t see how it’s possible to expand the number of acres of organic production and expect it to not have an impact on overall production.”

The only way that could happen is if the EU brought more land under cultivation, which flies in the face of its sustainability goals.

Leslie anticipated the initiative could provide an opportunity for competing grain exporters like Canada. EU exports have already been slumping in the past few years and with less production it will likely fall even further.

But with low carryover stocks of many commodities caused by drought and the war in Ukraine, it is probably not a good time for the EU to switch to growing lower-yielding crops, he said.

“It’s at odds with what our overall objective needs to be, which is sustainably increasing our overall production.”

Leslie worries that the EU’s push for increased organic agriculture production will spill into Africa, a region where it has considerable clout.

That same concern was espoused a couple of years ago by Gregg Doud, former chief agricultural trade negotiator for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

In a speech to the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City, he said the EU is abandoning the use of technology in agriculture.

“They have the Farm to Fork thing, which I call the Farm to Empty Fork because that’s what it’s going to be,” said Doud.

He added that the U.S. agriculture industry will continue to embrace technology and that Africa is going to be a key battleground for those two competing visions of agriculture.

“We are not going to let the EU send a message to Africa, or for that matter anywhere else in the world, that this is the direction to head,” said Doud.

– This article was originally published at The Western Producer.

The post European Union forges on with organics amid food insecurity worries appeared first on Farmtario.

Sales topped $6.5 billion in 2020, a 33 per cent increase over 2017 levels, according to a report published by the Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA). The 2017 figures represent the last time the group published its Organic Market Report.

The compound annual growth rate for the food and beverage sector was 10.2 per cent over that three-year period.

Why it matters: Consumer demand for organic products continues to grow but farmers find it financially onerous to undertake the conversion from conventional to organic production.

“Let me tell you, we were surprised by how high the growth has gone,” said COTA executive director Tia Loftsgard.

The organic industry had a 3.3 per cent share of Canada’s food and beverage market in 2020, up from 2.6 per cent in 2017 and 1.7 per cent in 2012.

Two-thirds of Canadians now buy organic food on a weekly basis.

Fruits and vegetables led the way, accounting for 41 per cent of organic sales. By comparison, bread and grains were fifth on the list with 8.8 per cent of sales.

Loftsgard said the association was unable to compare 2020 sales with 2019 because the last time COTA collected the data was 2017. However, she has a hunch that COVID-19 accelerated demand for organic food last year.

People were looking for safe products and they had more money to spend on groceries because of reduced expenditures on restaurant meals, travel and other items.

However, while demand is booming in Canada, the supply side continues to lag behind.

“There is never enough organic products produced in Canada to (meet) the demand that we have,” said Loftsgard.

There were 5,972 certified organic growers in Canada in 2020, a 24 per cent increase over 2017 levels.

However, almost all of that growth was in Quebec. 

Loftsgard said nobody collects production information and there is limited data about imports and exports, so it is impossible to tell how much of what is produced in Canada stays in this country.

She said the supply shortfall in the organic sector is a global issue, not just a Canadian phenomenon.

Some key production regions are attempting to address the problem. The European Commission has set a target under its Farm to Fork strategy to have at least 25 per cent of the EU’s agricultural land farmed organically by 2030.

“We don’t have any kind of a farm strategy led by our Canadian government to kind of move in that direction,” said Loftsgard.

COTA launched the Organic Conversion Support Program in 2019 to support grain farms and livestock producers to convert their operations to certified organic to meet rising global demand.

She believes one of the main reasons supply is falling short of demand is that growers are reluctant to pay the costs of certification while foregoing three years of organic premiums during the transition period.

The program reimburses farmers up to $1,000 for their certification costs. It has helped 94 farmers transition 8,483 acres into organic over the past two years. 

“We’re trying to do what we can to help create a welcoming environment for farmers, so that they’re not having to take the risk all on their own,” said Loftsgard.

The end goal is to convince Agriculture Canada to create a nationally funded program to help farmers make the transition.

Applications for the 2021 program will be accepted until June 30, 2022.

This article was originally published at The Western Producer.

The post Demand booms for organic foods appeared first on Farmtario.

The announcement was made at Chelsea Market, during Canada’s National Organic Week, an annual event to showcase and celebrate organic food farming and products across the country. The demand for organic foods in Canada continues to rise, but much of the Canadian demand for organics is met by imported products. With this investment, COG will develop a strategy to identify and find solutions to organic supply chain barriers so that Canadian organic producers can realize their full economic potential and more Canadian consumers can buy locally produced Canadian organic food.

Strategy recommendations will be assessed and evaluated by an independent industry-wide national advisory committee and a final report will be published that will explore investment opportunities to meet domestic demands and recommendations on how to best seize the opportunities. The report will also help quantify the economic and environmental benefits of increasing domestic organic production and supply chains.

The post Organic growers get funds to identify supply chain barriers appeared first on Farmtario.

Two southern Ontarians with no agriculture education or background, that’s who.

Why it matters: Innovative approaches and young farmers with fresh ideas can give agriculture a healthy spark and are vital to the continued sustainability of the industry.

Ten years later, Marcelle Paulin and Brendan Grant have turned Sleepy G Farm into a model for how a small farm can successfully serve a regional food market.

“We saw early on that the local food movement was just taking off,” said Grant, who met Paulin while both were attending Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

The young couple operate a vegetable and beef cattle operation at Pass Lake, 45 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. They bought a 171-acre unused dairy farm in 2006 and began developing it to produce vegetable crops for the local market in northwestern Ontario.

They started selling vegetables in 2009 and by 2013 were able to give up their off-farm jobs and work full-time on the farm.

They now also employ three full-time workers during the growing season.

The farm supplies several hundred people in the area through a community-supported program that provides fresh vegetables for six to eight months per year. Their biggest crop is carrots and the bulk of what they produce are root crops, which do best in the region’s short frost-free period of about 100 days.

The couple are both from southwestern Ontario, with Paulin coming from Owen Sound on Georgian Bay and Grant from London. They met at Lakehead while he was studying geography and outdoor recreation and she was studying social work.

They decided they wanted to get involved in the early but burgeoning local food movement of the 2000s, heading to British Columbia to work in some farming operations.

“We realized we probably couldn’t afford the land,” said Grant about what prompted the couple to think about farming in the relatively non-agricultural Thunder Bay area.

“We saw a lot of opportunity in the marketplace because there were no significant producers of vegetables,” he said.

The farm they bought needed a lot of work to bring into vegetable production, but by the time they were ready to begin selling produce, they discovered they had a good problem: more demand than they could supply.

“The market was ready the day we got there, but we had to quickly scale up production to meet it.”

For years they stuck to word-of-mouth marketing, building a base of eager consumers who wanted some of their food to come from the local area.

Their farm is also certified-organic, which is rare in the region but popular.

That’s something that has made them energetic members of the National Farmers Union, which has a declining profile in bulk commodity production but has been bringing in a whole new community of small-scale, direct-to-the-consumer farmers that is sprouting around most significant Canadian cities.

Paulin is the NFU Ontario women’s adviser and Grant is the regional president.

While the local farming community is small, focused mostly on dairy production, the farms scattered through the rocky, wooded region are situated in beautiful territory.

Their farm lies at the base of the famous Sleeping Giant rock formation that lies east of the city, stretching out into Lake Superior and looking like what the name suggests.

Their lives are busier than ever today, with baby Lowell adding a new and demanding element to the farm.

“We spent the first 10 years of our farming career building the farm. Now we’re in the process of building family,” said Paulin as she held the cheerful baby.

The couple haven’t picked an easy path in life, but they’re happy with how it’s working out and looking forward to the future.

Building a farm and establishing a community of consumers has been an exciting mission and process and they’re keen to keep going with it.

“You have to succeed at what you do,” said Paulin.

“We try hard. There’s a lot of passion behind what we do.”

This article was originally published at the Western Producer.

The post Northern Ontario farm serves local market appeared first on Farmtario.

But as one of the speakers at the recent Summit on Climate Action in Food Systems in Kelowna illustrated, it’s possible to overcome the “lowest price is the law” psyche.

Gillian Flies and her partner Brent Preston grow vegetables, mainly hand-cut seasonal greens, on a 20-acre farm about 1.5 hours north of Toronto.

New Farm started as a certified organic operation. Over time, their system expanded to include regenerative agriculture practices that ensure they sequester carbon and build soil health on their land. They outgrew selling through farmers markets and began working with a wholesale distributor.

Some of those regenerative practices such as eliminating tillage are also acknowledged as key to mitigating the effects of climate change.

Three years ago, they connected with the Toronto-based iQ Foods, a fast-casual restaurant chain trying to expand its offering of local, organic produce. Before long they were supplying 200 pounds of greens per week and there were plans for continued expansion.

Flies said New Farm purchased seed, prepared their seedbed, and ensured they had enough staff ready for the challenge. In February 2018, they got a phone call saying the deal was off.

“Their investors were upset because their food costs — they thought were off the charts. They said they were sorry but they were not going to be purchasing our product for the season,” she said.

Flies described their dilemma as having two options: find other customers or convince this customer their lettuce was worth paying for. Interestingly, the obvious option, which would have been to drop their price, wasn’t part of the discussion.

Flies went to Toronto to meet with the restaurant owner and his chef. She convinced them the issue was bigger than the cost of food.

“Instead of talking about food, I talked about climate change,” she says. “That’s something we can all relate to. It takes it outside the discussion of food cost and talks about the other intangible costs in food currencies other than financial.”

What emerged was an opportunity for the restaurant to differentiate itself in the marketplace and for New Farm to keep an important contract.

“I said ‘maybe you could instead of putting (the cost) all onto food costs, move some into a marketing budget and be a leader in this — get out ahead of this curve,’” she said.

Behavioural science suggests young people in particular are especially concerned about the environment and climate change, but feel helpless and overwhelmed by its magnitude.

Studies have shown millennial consumers are also more likely to spend more of their food dollar eating out. They support more artisanal and organic options as well.

“So giving people the opportunity to walk in, care for their health and at the same time make a difference and tangibly be able to pay for a product that they know is regenerating the soil and mitigating climate change was a great idea,” Flies said.

But in keeping with the goal of empowering consumers, the restaurant didn’t just raise the prices on the menu and then offer an explanation.

It gave customers a choice, not to pay more — but to pay less. The New Farm greens were a part of every menu item, so customers were going to get them whether they wanted to pay for them or not.

“Every time someone went to the counter, they were asked if they wanted to pay 50 cents less, or the suggested price,” Flies said.

They implemented a marketing campaign that involved the hashtags “Solve it with Salad” and “Bigger than Food.”

Eighty-five per cent of customers opted in. New Farm’s sales of hand-cut organic regenerative greens jumped to 500 pounds a week, and other restaurants are now interested in joining the campaign.

In another twist, rather than viewing this as competition, the original restaurant is willing to help other food suppliers implement the “Solve it with salad” campaign.

That’s a pretty clear acknowledgement that this is bigger than food.

The post Comment: Farmers as price makers instead of price takers appeared first on Farmtario.

I recently spent a couple of weeks in Europe visiting relatives and travelling with family. When travelling we make our own meals when we can, and that gives me a good chance to see the inside of supermarkets.

Britain is the cradle of the local food movement and it continues there with no signs of abating.

Britain is producing less and less of its own food, but yet the supermarkets I visited had British-grown and processed food at the forefront of all displays, shelves and counters. The need to label everything as British is pervasive.

I had a look at a can of baked beans that said it was processed in Britain. There’s a good chance that the white beans inside came from Ontario, as Canada supplies more than half of the white beans used for baked beans in Britain.

That represents the old and traditional way of doing business in Canada – selling undifferentiated commodities.

It’s value added that gets the sales and the exposure in the British food world – and indeed in most of Europe. That’s where Canadian agriculture and food exporters have to go – to finished products that are of value to the market, not just unprocessed products.

Look at the results since CETA, the free trade agreement with the European Union, implemented in 2018. Canada has increased its pork and beef exports by more than 100 per cent…but that is 100 per cent increase of very little before the agreement. Conversely, the EU has grown its export of mostly processed products to Canada.

EU food exports to Canada increased by almost 10 per cent, while Canada’s exports to the EU declined.

Until we are able to send high quality, less expensive finished product into Europe – preferably with a marketed story that gives consumers what they want – that trade deficit will be a challenge.

It’s what the European market wants to buy. If we want to compete there we have to give it to them. I’ve heard for 20 years that it’s frustrating that they find ways to not buy our undifferentiated product through non-tariff barriers. Let’s create better differentiated products.

Take the prepared meats counters in Canada versus the EU. Here there’s little differentiation other than company and price.

In a Waitrose in Britain near where my wife’s sister and her family live, the meat for slicing is labelled British first, then it also contains the other popular labels – the free-from and organics. Yes, Waitrose is similar to Loblaws, which is at the upper end for grocery store pricing, but there are some good lessons.

At one end of the counter is all the British meat – and it’s all differentiated beyond just British. At the other end is meat from other places, most of it undifferentiated, but a whole lot less expensive.

You can see a similar trend in the fresh fruits and vegetable area, with premium, and not always great quality fruits and vegetables from British farmers given precedence. What struck me is there’s little middle ground. You’re either British or you’re bulk and undifferentiated (also affordable).

It would make sense to me that there’s room in the middle for a differentiated, high quality, decently priced group of products from a country that still sits well with the British – Canada, of course.

Canada doesn’t have the mystical cache in the U.K. that it does in Japan, China and other eastern countries. The crisp, clean and beautiful country that we sell in the far east won’t fly in the U.K. They know us too well. However, it would be a good place to try out the mature, strong Canada Brand that everyone in export marketing’s been talking about for at least a decade. And tie it in with company labels of Canadian companies who can create a quality and health story that’s new in Europe.

The other question is, who are those Canadian companies who can fill the market with a differentiated product? Unfortunately that’s the other thing keeping us from taking more advantage of the EU market. We have some strong meat processing companies who already do this well in the far east. But, beyond Canadian meat companies, our food processors are focused on the U.S. and many do well there. Many lack the economic heft to make a pivot towards Europe, although it’s badly needed and quite possible.

The post Editorial: Lessons from the European market appeared first on Farmtario.

In fact, if American farmers tried to grow that many soybeans to make into meal, it could disrupt the whole organic system, says Ryan Koory, senior analyst with Mercaris, an American organic market intelligence company.

Why it matters: Organic production needs to be balanced among several crops in a rotation. When demand for one crop grows more than others, it makes managing that rotation a challenge.

Rapid growth in organic livestock production is driving the increase in soybean meal being imported into the United States. About 70 per cent of all soybean product imports to the U.S. is soymeal.

Organic livestock production is easier for large integrated farms to get into than crop production, so some of the largest producers of poultry in the U.S. are now raising organic chickens. They are buying most of their feed, and much of the protein in the ration, supplied by soybean meal, is coming from places like India.

There’s been a sharp rise in demand for organic chicken, which the large producers are trying to fill.

“If we shut off imports, the implications would be catastrophic,” says Koory. “It would throw things totally out of whack.”

If imports were replaced by American soybean production, the volume needed would also increase the volume of other organic crops. Because of the requirement for a diverse rotation on organic farmers, that would mean even more crops that are difficult to market, says Koory. To replace soybean imports would require 864,000 acres of organic soybeans.

“Maybe we need to solve the import issues by addressing the demand,” he told the annual meeting of the Organic Council of Ontario (OCO).

By that, he means making sure that those who produce organic livestock have to also produce a portion of the feed for those livestock.

Koory says he sees the need for co-operative farming models, where farmers work together to get the rotations they need, yet can achieve the scale to be competitive and supply markets, including livestock operations.

Good marketing information in the U.S. and Canadian organic sector is hard to come by, says Koory.

In Canada, he says it just doesn’t exist, so in his OCO presentation, he mostly focused on American numbers.

Information on imports is scant for the U.S. too, because some categories differentiate between organic and conventional imports, but others do not.

There was a corn import scandal several years ago when non-organic product was passed off as organic through Turkey. That meant a decline almost to zero of organic corn imports from Turkey. However, there has been a significant increase in cracked corn imports, a commodity harder to track than whole corn.

Koory says that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) is supposed to monitor imports and potential fraud, but it is “grossly underfunded. It doesn’t have the manpower or the financial resources to do what they are chartered to do.”

The current president isn’t interested in funding greater oversight of organic programs, he says, so he doesn’t expect to see much improvement in funding for organic oversight anytime soon.

The post Replacing U.S. imports of organic soybeans unlikely appeared first on Farmtario.