Organic vs Organic
No matter which side of the Canada-US border you’re on, the standard should help the soil.
I had a cottage for about 11 years in the Eastern Townships, a bucolic landscape of small farms, rolling hills and a well-developed artisanal food scene east of Montreal.
I sold it last year, bucking the trend of eager city-dwellers scooping up rural properties to escape the ravages of COVID in urban cities.
But during those 11 years, we commuted from Montreal out to the Townships pretty much every weekend. Just after you cross the Richelieu River, about 30 kilometres east of Montreal, the land flattens out into a broad expanse of farms. From that point on, for the following 40 kilometres (in addition to the region directly south of Montreal) is the largest concentration of farms in the Province.
There’s a reason for this. The soil. The native soil in this region is rich, black and loamy, making it ideal for farming.
But what always struck me as odd — particularly during the late Fall after harvest, and early Spring, before the planting — was the amount of dust in the air. Whenever conditions were dry enough, the wind would whip up dust clouds high into the air. It wasn’t dust-bowl bad, but still, I wondered why.
It was only after my sensibilities around food production became more honed that I realized I was witnessing soil erosion in action. The crops near the highway were monoculture corn and soybeans. The plants were stripped from the land in the fall, and the land left bare over winter. Without a crop to hold it down, the soil was being lifted by the wind, and carried away. As the soil is exposed to the air, it dries out, killing the micro-organisms and turning once-rich growing soil into dry, non-living dirt.
Vegetable farmers are getting concerned about the rapidity of the erosion. As this region is the the ‘lettuce basket’ of Canada, they’re working on a variety of pilot projects to slow and stop the erosion, such as the use of cover crops, reducing drainage to conserve water, ‘amending’ the soil cover with wood chips or other organic matter to keep the micro-organisms alive and productive and windbreaks to assist in keeping the soil on the ground, rather than in the air, during periods of high wind.
And then I came across a recent story from the United States. The District Court of San Francisco ruled that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was correct in certifying hydroponic producers as ‘organic’ under their National Organic Program.
My instinctive reaction was: how can a hydroponic operation — which uses liquid nutrient solutions to grow crops — be considered organic, if it does nothing for the soil? I’m not the only one thinking this. The US Centre for Food Safety and the Regenerative Organic Alliance thinks along the same lines: if it doesn’t help the soil, it cannot be considered organic.
In the United States, the USDA’s National Organic Program was originally conceived in the mid-20th century with the philosophy of a closed-loop farming system, with the growing of a product returning essential nutrients to the soil to allow the soil to continually regenerate itself.
But over the years, there’s been a philosophical shift away from this foundational concept to the point where the US organic standards are more focused on what is not permitted as inputs into the growing of an agricultural product, i.e., synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc. than how such a standard contributes to the soil health. This allows producers using hydroponic greenhouse technology to be able to have their product certified as organic.
I was curious about this, given the powerhouse that Savoura is as a brand not only in Quebec, but elsewhere in Canada, and throughout the Northeastern United States in supplying tomatoes, cucumbers and now strawberries during the colder, winter months. Savoura uses an extensive group of large greenhouses to grow their product, in which their Savoura Bio line is labelled organic and certified by EcoCert Canada, and carries the Canada Organic, USDA Organic and Aliments du Quebec, Bio labels. Quite a mouthful of organic certifications.
But of greater importance for me is whether or not Savoura, and other greenhouse companies in Canada, are growing their product in soil, or in a liquid nutrient solution. In other words, are the organic standards the same in Canada as they are in the United States?
The Canadian General Principles and Management Standards for Organic Production Systems certainly starts out with the right principles in its preamble that ‘Organic products referenced in this standard are derived from a production system that:
- seeks to nurture ecosystems through its management practices in order to achieve sustainable productivity; and
- provides control of pests including insects, weeds and disease through enhancement of biodiversity, recycling of plant and animal residues, crop selection and rotation, water management, tillage and cultivation’.
So far, so good. But there is a hitch for farmers who are using soil to produce their crops and wish to be certified as organic: as a farmer, you have to be able to demonstrate that you haven’t used any prohibited substances for at least 36 months, and then once that hurdle is passed, have the organic standard applied for a full 12 months before being to market and sell a product that is considered organic.
4 years. Think about that for a moment.
That’s a lot of lead time for a farmer, and potential loss of business to take into account. And this doesn’t take into account the actions the organic farmer has to take to minimize the incursion of prohibited substances into her farm from her neighbours who choose to continue to farm in a non-organic fashion.
However, pure hydroponic operations cannot be considered for organic certification in Canada. The Organic Council of Ontario — the chief Ontario organization that contributes to the development, maintenance and interpretation of organic standards for that Province — notes that ‘Canadian organic standards broadly speaking do not allow [hydroponic] systems because organic farming practices include soil improvement and biodiversity conservation, and these systems do not use soil at all’.
So, Savoura is growing their product in soil; they’d have to to be able to obtain the Canada Organic certification.
There are other differences between Canadian and US organic standards as well — Canada has organic certification for certain aquaculture products, but the US does not; Sodium Nitrate mined from Northern Chile is permitted for use as a fertilizer under USDA organic standards, but not in Canada, as it has been shown to have detrimental effects on both human and soil health; Canada has specific ‘stocking rates’ for non-ruminant animals (the number of animals on a given amount of land on over a given amount of time) governing how animals are to be treated before being considered for certification as organic while the US has none of these minimum requirements.
There is no question that Canadian organic standards are more soil-focused than those in the United States.
While helpful, it still leaves the question of the 4 year transition time that farmers have to endure before they can market their products as certified organic.
There may be a solution in the implementation of regenerative agricultural practices as a bridge between pure chemically-dependent agricultural practices and becoming certified organic.
These practices have at their core the following principles:
- keep the soil covered
- minimize soil disturbance
- maximize crop diversity
- maintain living root year-round
- integrate livestock
All of these principles have at their core the goal of increasing the amount of micro-organisms in the soil, which will maintain and increase overall soil health and, further, will build soil over the course of years.
An increasing number of farmers are adopting the practice across Canada and the United States. Some recent estimates put the total acreage using regenerative agricultural principles at 4% of the total land dedicated to agriculture in the United States — about 13.9 million acres. In 2019, General Mills has pledged to commit to regenerative agricultural practices on 1 million acres by 2030, and is working with one of the US’ pioneers in the regenerative field, Gabe Brown, to make this happen.
But, as helpful as this method of farming is for the soil, it’s not considered organic.
The non-profit Regenerative Organic Alliance in the US has created a Regenerative Organic Certification, mainly to counter the laxity of the current USDA organic standard noted above, and as a reaction to the former Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw a stringent organic animal welfare rule.
There are discussions occurring in Canada about this new standard, but it’s complicated by the fact that Canada’s existing standards are already anchored in the principles of soil health and management (although, not all farmers agree that Canadian standards go far enough) and concerns around making the current organic standards more stringent, and thereby having an effect on the pricing of the final product to the consumer.
While this debate is ongoing, farmers can switch to regenerative practices as a means to gradually wean their farming operations off of chemical inputs and to facilitate their journey to organic certification. They’ll be able to communicate their philosophical shift to consumers, and sell their product through a variety of means, such as subscription-based baskets, or through the existing network of farmers markets.
In the end, both certified organic and regenerative methods achieve the same thing: preservation and enhancement of soil health, along with a number of other benefits, including better water absorption and a more nutrient-dense product.
The issue of soil erosion is becoming urgent. The United Nations has noted that, if current rates of soil degradation continue, all of the world’s topsoil could become unproductive in 60 years.
Farmers in Quebec have also noted that, at the current rate of topsoil loss, all of it could be gone within the same time period. Since 95% of the world’s food comes from soil, its important that we transform to an agricultural model that is more sustainable, and further, focuses on building the soil, rather than simply mining a limited resource, as much of monoculture farming is doing.
I certainly hope that, over time, the USDA changes its philosophy and returns to foundation principles of focusing on the soil, in addition to prohibiting certain inputs. Both taken together are a powerful set of standards that can lead to overall better soil health.
In the meantime, the now-competing standard of Regenerative Organic Certification can also lead to more farmers — particularly in the United States — to jump into producing their goods using regenerative methods. The regenerative movement is growing as more and more farmers realize that it helps them become better stewards of the land, as well as allowing them to produce a multiplicity of crops that contributes to the reinforcement of food sovereignty within the communities in which they’re located.
One can only hope that organic standards follow suit and remain focused on soil.
