Gordon Watkins recent reply to Doug Hinds was so perfectly managed that I
can't improve upon it.
I can only add that it was the Ozark Small Farm Viability Project's FARMER
TO FARMER , edited by Eric Kindberg and David Haehn that woke me from my
Texas reverie in 1993. Watkins was on the OSFVP board. As an organic farmer
with a long haul in organic grassroots organizing behind me, I owe to them
all a debt that I can only have repaid by putting my shoulder to the wheel.
Foremost is my gratitude is for the educational effort that such folks have
made in informing organic farmers and organic consumers about the exquisite
beauty of the Organic Foods Production Act.
Was there ever a standard of production more comprehensive in its protection
of traditional organic farming than the National List Procedure? Section 2118
is our chief safeguard against any sort of marketing elite that would seek to
alter the definition of organic. And it is has been, in all my experience,
first and always Eric Kindberg who has been hammering that fact home for the
past 7 years.
Surely, the accreditation of certification agencies and the cost of
inspections are important issues worthy of discussion. Likewise, the curious
way that our political/economic system continues to benefit corporate health
while bludgeoning the planet.
But I do hope that organic farmers and activists will prepare themselves to
address the more important issues which may be raised in the NOP Proposed
Rule with regard to materials and substances, particularly the PROCEDURE and
CRITERIA for inclusion and prohibition.
I'm hanging my hat on that one.
Steve Sprinkel
Texas Organic Growers Association
Organic Farmers Marketing Association <http://www.iquest.net/ofma/>
national organics editor, ACRES, USA
Austin
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