Creating and Protecting a FamilyFarm Oriented Organic Livestock Industry

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Creating and Protecting a Family-Farm Oriented
Organic Livestock Industry

• John Bobbe, Executive Director
• Carmen Fernholz, Vice President

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Problems and challenges facing the organic
livestock industry

• Industrialization
• Infrastructure development for growth
• Lack of market transparency
• Developing grades
• Transportation
• Maintaining organic integrity
• Limitations of direct marketing

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Industrial Agricultural Model

• Raw materials and production resources are
  sourced and mined from rural America or abroad
  driven by stockholder demands to meet
  profitability expectations.

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Conventional Industrial Agriculture Model

• Market transparency almost non-existent
• Contracts dictate production and tie supply
  directly to manufacturing sector
• High volume-low margin
• Labor, capital and management are often separated
• Cheap labor is a key component
• Profits and returns to stockholders drive
  decisions
• Reliant upon huge tax subsidies
• Sourcing anywhere in the world materials are
  cheapest
• Environmental considerations are secondary

Consumers

• Retailing
• Wholesaling
• Processing
• Assembly

Production
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• The kind of economy we are drifting into
  amounts to a reversion, a throwback, to the
  feudalism from which our European ancestors
  escaped. Except for the corps of managers, the
  corporate structure will be dwarfing to the human
  spirit. In much of agriculture the man or woman
  on the land will not be an imaginative innovator,
  but a faithful follower of written instructions.
  Dr. Harold Breimyer

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Industrial systems have historically degraded

• Their environment
• Depleted the natural resource base
• Human resource base
• Is management extensive
• Independent decision makers into workers-people
  who only know how to follow directions
• Their communities and local economies
• John Ikerd, Economist Emeritus, University of
  Missouri-Columbia

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Environment
Organic Family Farmers
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Challenges to continued development of the
organic livestock industry

• Infrastructure-currently about 2 slaughtering
  facilities per state
• Federal versus state inspection limitations
• Market transparency in prices, grades
• Debate on standards (natural, grass-fed hormone
  and antibiotic free, grain-fed, organic)

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Cost of transportation

• Transporting livestock as a bulk commodity long
  distances from farm gate to slaughter to consumer

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Maintaining Organic Integrity

• One reason is growing uneasiness over a rapid
  move toward bigness and concentration and
  cannibalism by outsiders of organic businesses. 
  Also important is diminishing influence over the
  future direction of organic agriculture by
  farmers like you who share the organic farming
  vision, have built consensus around its
  principles, and have responded to consumer
  expectations by establishing systems guaranteeing
  organic integrity. 
• (Roger Blobaum, Blobaum and Associates)

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Assaults on Organic Integrity

• Attempts to tie organic prices to conventional
  pricing systems like the Chicago Board of Trade
• The value of well-place rumors in market
  psychology to pressure farm-gate prices downward
• Non-disclosure clauses in producer contracts
  similar to the conventional poultry industry

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Assaults on Organic Integrity

• Attempts by one poultry producer in the last Farm
  Bill to allow labeling chicken as organic even
  if fed conventional feed
• The current debate over NOSB pasture rules
• Failure by NOSB to act on rules and
  recommendations
• Attempts to mine rural America for cheap
  organic raw materials

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Individual, Direct and Group Marketing

• Currently there are many individuals who have
  found their niche generally on a small scale
• Traditional models are evolving-companies
  contracting for cattle having strict
  specifications (feeding, weights, etc.)
• Group Marketing-groups are evolving-issues
  include timely payment, market transparency,
  potential for profits or loses and financial
  viability of buyers

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There is a lack of reliable PRODUCER GENERATED
information to base farm production and
marketing decisions for profitability.
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Counties with organic farms

• Have stronger farm economies
• Contribute more to local economies through taxes
  and local purchases
• Have more committed farmers
• Give more to rural development
• Provide more bird and wildlife habitat and
  reduced use of pesticides
• Reduced agricultural runoff
• (Source Lohur, University of Georgia, 2002)

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MBGA
OBGM
WOMA
OFARM
OFM
NFO
GLO
MOFC
KOPA
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Why Family Farmers?

• The overwhelming DEBILITATING consequence of
  societys reliance on outside interventions into
  agricultures human resource responsibilities is
  born out by family farm agricultures lack of
  initiative to balance its influence, viability
  and responsibility with that of the other
  economic positions of influence in which it
  functions

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In further defining these responsibilities we
might ask these questions

• 1. Is raising food meant to be an occupation from
  which to make a good adequate living, or is it in
  fact only a part time job requiring a second job
  away from the field?
• 2 Can raising adequate amounts of food only be
  accomplished with government subsidies, tight
  margins and dependent only on efficiencies of
  scale?
• 3. Is producing food in reality merely producing
  commodities with the use of a non-owner/operator
  labor force?
• 4. How does the ratio of eyes to acres compare
  to the ratio of say eyes to students, or eyes to
  patients?.

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The future of a viable organic livestock sector
includes

• Producers having an equal place at the
  negotiating table
• Producer friendly contracts
• Buyers and producers living up to contract terms
• Buyers who pay in a timely manner
• The industry policing itself to get rid of the
  bad actors
• Protecting the integrity of organic