National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture

Letter in Support of OREI Funding

Dear Friend of Organic Research:

The process of ironing out the differences between the Senate and House Farm Bills is finally underway! While many of the organic committee's key priorities have fared well in this Farm Bill round we still have work to do in protecting these gains in conference.

Both the House and the Senate Farm Bills include mandatory funding of $22 million for organic certification cost share. Both the House and the Senate Farm Bills establish a new program to provide incentive payments, cost share, and technical assistance to producers transitioning to organic.

Only the Senate Bill, however, provides adequate funding for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI). The Senate would commit $16 million in annual mandatory funding for this competitive grants program to support vitally important organic research. The House provides just $5 million.

Please consider adding your organization's name to this sign on letter (see below) being circulated by the Organic Farming Research Foundation in support of adequate OREI funding. Only organizations or businesses please. If you are a farmer or an individual please visit our website (www.sustainableagriculture.net) for the latest Farm Bill Alert on funding for key sustainable agriculture programs to find out how to make a call or write a letter in support of OREI funding.

Deadline for sign-ons is 11am Eastern February 14th (Thurs). To sign onreply to Mark Lipson at or Tracy Lerman at 831-426-6606 or . Please provide the name of your organization, and the name and title of officer or staff person.

Organic Farming Research Foundation
110 Maryland Ave NE Suite 209 Washington DC 20002
Te. 202-821-2760 Fax 202-547-1837

February 13, 2008

TO: H.R. 2419 Conferees
FROM: Undersigned Groups and Businesses

RE: Organic Research Funding in H.R. 2419 Conference Package

Dear H.R. 2419 Conferee,
The undersigned groups and businesses urge your attention to ensuring significant progress towards a fair share of agricultural research and education spending for organic farming and ranching. In crafting a final conference agreement on H.R. 2419, we strongly recommend that you accept the House policy language but the Senate funding provision for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI)[1].

The Senate bill provides mandatory spending of $16 million per year for OREI. The House bill provides only $5 million per year, a negligible increase from the current funding of $3 million per year.[2] The House policy language amendments add conservation outcomes and seed breeding to the program's purposes.

The Senate figure is still less than 0.7% of total USDA-REE expenditures in FY07. A "fair share" of USDA-REE research expenditures for organic, at current U.S. market share of about 4%, would be roughly $100 Million per year. By FY2013, the market share of organic foods is expected to be nearly 10%. A significant increase in OREI funding is absolutely crucial to making progress towards the fair-share benchmark.

USDA-REE expenditures directed explicitly to research and information programs for organic agriculture in FY 07 were only slightly above 1% of total REE spending. This discrepancy in the share of research funding spent on organics is detrimental to an industry that relies intensively on management and information for its success. In fact, lack of knowledge is the biggest limiting factor for farmers and ranchers who are looking to take advantage of the growing organic market demand and profits that it brings.

Without an increase in research and education spending to a level that is at least commensurate with organic's share of the domestic food retail market, U.S. farmers will lack the necessary information they need to compete against rising imports, and participate in the economic opportunity presented by the rapidly growing organic market.

OREI is USDA's premier competitive research and education program specifically dedicated to investigation of organic agriculture. Research and extension projects funded through the OREI competitive grant program focus on meeting the production, marketing and policy needs of the growing organic industry. But the funding is extremely small compared to the research and education needs. In fact, of the 210 fundable proposals submitted for Integrated Organic Program funding between 2004 and 2006, only 29 proposals, (13.8%), could be funded due to the limited money available.

We understand that there are enormous pressures on you to cut Farm Bill spending. We are mindful of Chairman Peterson's instruction last spring that, "everyone will be unhappy." We accept that organic agriculture should be treated equally with respect to the shortfall from our goals. The Senate bill's funding level for OREI would still be far short of our fair-share goal, but would at least get us closer to equally sharing the fiscal pressures.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

[signees]

[1] OREI is established in Section 1672B(e) of the Food, Agriculture, Conservation and Trade Act of 1990, as amended by Section 7218 of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. Senate provision of H.R. 2419 is Section 7104; House provision is Section 7310.
[2] OFRF's initial recommendation last year for mandatory organic research funding was $40 Million/yr