Organic Research
While consumer demand for organic and sustainably-produced foods is steadily rising, public funding for associated research and extension has been slowly eroding. For instance, the U.S. retail market share of organic foods was approaching 3.5 percent, at the same time that the USDA’s research and extension expenditure for organic agriculture was less than 1.5 percent of its total research budget. The total investment in sustainable agriculture and development is still a tiny fraction of the over $2.5 billion annual federal investment in food and agriculture research.
Thanks to an outpouring of grassroots pressure, the 2008 Farm Bill takes a few important steps toward reversing this downward trend, making more resources available for important work on organic and sustainable agriculture research.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) worked closely with the Organic Farming Research Foundation and others to successfully win:
- a five-fold increase in mandatory funding for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative in the 2008 Farm Bill. With its new, larger Farm Bill resources, this organic research program will now be equivalent in size to the ongoing Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, forming a powerful duo to build from for the future.
During the 2008 Farm Bill campaign NSAC and its partners also tried to create a National Program for Organic Agriculture within the Agriculture Research Service at USDA. It was not successful during the farm bill fight, but will keep the pressure on during the FY10 appropriations campaign. It will also leverage the launch of the Center for Organic Investigations within ARS in the coming year.