Episode #211
Bernward Geier: Doing Right In The Wrong System

Global Support for Organic

Bernward Geier emphasizes how crucial it is for US farmers, eaters, and policy makers to back the organic movement and demand support for truly sustainable farming practices, domestically. While many regions in Europe and India have seen strong support for organic agriculture through government subsidies and free certification programs, the US is behind and relies on imports to fill the gap between organic production and demand. Successful initiatives to adopt include: financial aid for farmers transitioning to organic practices, retail employee trainings, and consumer education campaigns. Bernward believes that support for uncompromised organic farming must grow to ensure a sustainable and functioning food system on our planet. He urges listeners to purchase certified products and advocate for stronger support policies that reinforce the integrity of the USDA organic program in a rapidly evolving market.

Our Bernward Geier interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Linley Dixon interviews Bernward Geier in Germany at Biofach, February 2025

Linley Dixon 0:00
I just got an email from Eliot Coleman. He said, “How is BIOFACH? Have the capitalists taken over?” What do you think?

Bernward Geier 0:08
Well, I think if I see Eliot here, he would like it, because it’s very different from the organic fairs like you have in the US, which I know – the expos – because they still…

Linley Dixon 0:20
He hates the organic fairs in the US.

Bernward Geier 0:22
I know. There is still a movement here, and there’s still a lot of heart here and passion. But there’s also business, and also big business, because organic is a reality also in the big business world. But really quite different. It’s the world exhibition, so you have so many players. There’s definitely more farmers than in other business fairs here, because the farm organizations are very present. Like your partner organization, Naturland. It’s very strong here, and they bring a lot of farmers here. So, I think he would not like all what he sees here, he would have probably some hot debates with a few people, but he would find a lot what we all have in our hearts, what we think the organic…

Linley Dixon 1:05
To me, it’s so essential what we’re doing here, because I don’t think we have any trouble teaching people how to grow organically. I came out of the university system and I think organic…it’s hard to farm. You have to use the chemicals to succeed. The poor farmer. So, they justify the use of the chemicals. That’s all academia. Once you do it, you realize there are all these practitioners. But right now, it’s happening in the United States. The reason why Real Organic Project exists is there’s money being put from the government into transition, and then these farmers don’t have markets.

Bernward Geier 1:44
This is the same here. We have subsidy programs. I actually don’t like subventions and subsidies at all, in principle, for farming – for commercial farmers who depend on subsidies as well – a lot. For me, this is nails in the coffin. But I can accept, and I see a reasoning in helping farmers to convert to organic, especially in the [inaudible 00:02:05], when they really convert and have yield expression, etc. I think it’s good, and we have to move because the market doesn’t give the farmers the money they deserve. We need to move also to pay for service. For environmental services – clean water, clean air, healthy food.

Bernward Geier 2:21
So, if there is subsidies, then rather for this benefits, where we all benefit, than just for having acres. Like the EU subsidies, for having acres. You have a lot of acres, you have a lot of money, no matter what you do on the field. It’s not quite like this. There is now some strings attached, and some things have to be delivered. But we have to come to the point in the CAP reform, Common Agricultural Policy reform, which is due in the EU. We have come to the point that we move away from just giving money for owning land or farming land even, or have farming worked on by workers, to give support to what they do right. Which is, of course, in ecological farming, organic farming, with all the benefits for the environment.

Linley Dixon 3:13
In the US, it’s not just about big agriculture taking away markets. They’re actually changing the standards. That is because they have so much political power. What is different in the EU, where they haven’t experienced this pressure to lower the standards?

Bernward Geier 3:30
First of all, I have lived one and a half years in the 70s, in the US, and I have already then seen big corp and big global players, the big organizations that were already around – the Krafts, the Heinz, the Chiquitas, and so on. Maybe I can illustrate where the difference maybe starts.

Bernward Geier 3:51
When I came to the States, I came as a very young, 20-year-old. I came into the organic movement. It’s 50 years ago. When I came to the States, it was very much a hippie thing. We were food co-op, and we had some organic grain farmers somewhere, where most or part of your roots are – or very important part of your roots. But then, when I came to the first expos already early, which was a bit later because I studied and I was traveling in the world, that I would say in the 80s, when I went to the food expos in Philadelphia, wherever – I already realized that even in terminology, everybody talked about the organic industry. That’s a phrase that was not known here. We didn’t use it. We were in organic movement. We talked about organic farming, and we talked about organic business, maybe. But not as an industry.

Bernward Geier 4:41
This concept of industry, I then observed how the big corporates bought one after the other company, often keeping the name, but the ownership was there. There’s this famous study, I don’t know, like from the University of California, who monitors this, that nine of the ten biggest food companies had bought organic companies. Knowledge, of course, market access, and of course, they have strategic reasons to be involved. So, you have already very early gone…

Bernward Geier 5:13
Another typical example to explain this: Here, we have a good tradition of businesses set up and they become family businesses. Your thing is: make a nice company, make it viable, make it economically successful, and pass it on to your kin, children. And they pass it on to the next. We have, at the moment, a big phase of the organic pioneers who have 30, 40 years, set up a business, never sold it, and now they pass it on. It works in many, not in all, but it works in many cases.

Bernward Geier 5:44
Best example is Rapunzel, our number one company. It still has hippie roots. The company started little, making muesli in a bathtub, and they are now the biggest company in Germany for organic. They never, ever would think about selling this company or the owner to multinational or big corporation or a hedge fund. That’s even worse if the finance world gets in. Now three of his four kids run the company. That’s quite a typical example.

Bernward Geier 6:15
So, in America, I make it a bit simple. I know it’s not all this way. In America, my impression was: you get involved in organic – maybe you are a freak, you’re in the 70s, 80s or so – you make a company big and successful, then you sell it to a bigger one. So you have not this emotional link. It’s an industry. You think this way, and then the big ones, they do whatever they want with the company, but it loses its soul. The pioneers are out, then it’s just business. Not a healthy business, which I want to see and I see, still as quite valuable.

Bernward Geier 6:49
So, this is a big difference, how to look – even I did – and then how you behave, and what is the purpose. Why you run a company, why you work like mad. If you set up a company, you work a lot – at least as much as a farmer, I would say – and take a lot of responsibility. But you do it because you want to create a legacy which you pass on to the next generation. Whereas in America, I simplify: you make a company, you make it big, you sell it, you strike it rich, you retire, you buy a house in Hawaii, that’s it. I’ve seen this quite often.

Bernward Geier 7:20
This is maybe one explanation and it’s different, but, of course, we have the challenges here. We are not here on a pink and rosy world. We have also big business getting involved. But they rather try to adapt and they rather try to get some of the spirit incorporated, like in the retail. By far, the biggest is now sold in retails. Now we had this culture of organic shops.

Bernward Geier 7:46
When I started in organic movement in the 70s, that was the place you found…you didn’t find in supermarkets organic food. It was just 2,000 maybe organic shops at this time. Now we have organic supermarket chains. A hundred percent organic. It’s not like Whole Foods, who is far away, for me, from an organic supermarket.

Bernward Geier 8:06
Here, I don’t know if you’ve seen some, we have various chains, with 120 or more supermarkets, which are a hundred percent organic, consequent. They look to get organic, not just EU organic or USDA organic, but from the farm organizations like Naturland, Bioland, and they like it because the brands have a value here. If people go organic, educate consumers, they want more than just EU organic. They want from farm organizations, the branding Bioland. Everybody knows Bioland, everybody knows Naturland. Demeter is maybe the Mercedes under the brands.

Bernward Geier 8:45
This is maybe different to your work. You have never, in my eyes, as I observed the movement, and I’ve been quite engaged in the US, you have never developed the equivalents of our farm organizations. You never have developed the Naturland. Okay, you have MOFGA, you have your organizations which are farm-based, but not on a national level. You had OTA, which, by name, Organic Trade Association. What’s probably missing, which now it’s probably too late to build up… No, now you have it now. It’s ROP. No, I’m not saying it because…

Linley Dixon 9:18
We did a lot of damage by showing up too late.

Bernward Geier 9:20
Yeah, but it’s not your fault. The more so you need all the support, and you see it here. The hearts fly to you. We do everything to make it known, to support you in media. But somewhere, I always was hoping, “Why don’t they have OFA, Organic Farmer Association, not only Organic Trade Association?” The Organic trade Association did what they have to do. They look for the well-being of the trade and development of the trade.

Bernward Geier 9:50
In my eyes, they went over the border with allowing all this and taking side of the NOSB. In the early time, I thought this is CCOF Organic Farmer Association, but it’s not. I know they’re part of the problem certifying the hydroponics, etc.

Linley Dixon 10:10
I think that was the missed opportunity. Is right now, CCOF says, “We can’t help it. There’s nothing we can do. The NOP is the one that accredits us, and so we have to do what they say.” That’s what they’re saying. So it’s nobody’s fault. But we made the mistake of not… you can’t go better. Everybody has to….

Bernward Geier 10:32
But that’s not true. You have certifiers who said, “We are not certifying”

Linley Dixon 10:36
Only now, yeah.

Bernward Geier 10:38
But they saw at least it’s not true. With this you can confront CCOF. They got [inaudible 00:10:44] Join them. If they do it, you can do it. You want to do it…

Linley Dixon 10:51
So, we just have to be much more active. So do you get this criticism of, “Too many labels?” What do you say to that?

Bernward Geier 10:59
Of course. I started to work as IFOAM director ’86. That was the time when we moved into supermarkets. So, there was a huge debate, let’s say, by the hard core dogmatic. I don’t like dogmatism, and I’m known to challenge the movement with Troy on dogmas. But there was this dogma, ” Oh, it’s not organic if it’s in a supermarket shelf.” So, organic has to be in a nice, little, fancy, hippie organic shop. I never was on that side.

Bernward Geier 11:33
But in this time the supermarkets started organic lines very successful. So they developed the business more and more, but we still kept our health food shops, and we had this hundred percent organic supermarket chains. So, there was diversity.

Bernward Geier 11:50
That brings me to the point of the label. We all love diversity. This is in the chains of organic is diversity, and we can have diversity on the market as much as we want it. It’s a consumer choice: how much they want to study, how much they want to know. But you need one unifying label that it’s easy for consumer to see it’s organic.

Bernward Geier 12:10
Then if I want more than EU organic, we have the EU label, we have the German national label, it’s on 80,000 products, that’s fine. But if you like Demeter food, then go for the Demeter label. If you like a farm-based, farm organization brand, you go to Naturland, you go to Bioland. So, we have these choices. It’s not an overkill of labels. We can have a lot of labels, we can diversify below, and it’s for each label the job to be known and to find the market for what is behind the label, but we need a unifying label. If you just dump the labels like this, this is disastrous.

Bernward Geier 12:51
One of the things, I had it for ages on my shelf, a little baby food jar,Gerbers got, I think they had 14 labels because they didn’t know where they didn’t know where they get the supply this year, next year. They didn’t want to change labels, so they put all the labels that potentially would be certified ingredients in their product.

Bernward Geier 13:08
This is a killer for consumers, and this on a little jar. It was just as big. I call it always the Fleisch label in communication. That’s wrong. But if you have like we have here this EU label, and even more known here the German national label, which is backed and supported and co-funded – the promotion of it – by the government, then you can have as many labels behind.

Bernward Geier 13:31
But, of course, for the consumer, it’s confusing, and this is the challenge I think ROP has. You have the story, you have the right products. You have what many people expect, when they go shop organic, not knowing what they may get. So you have it all together. So in a way you could – and I see you on the way to it, it’s a long way, and it takes a lot of energy and resources, also financial resources – but, as you continue to develop and prosper, ROP could become the mark to signal and give the communication to consumers: if you really want organic, something you can really fully trust, which is not compromising. To make it really in organic, like you have CAFO systems in animal husbandry in organic. Impossible here. Impossible to think about.

Bernward Geier 14:41
You started as a project, a Real Organic Project, but I think the time has changed. You are not a project anymore. What describes you much better is what’s in IFOAM’s acronym – Real Organic movement. International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. Our founding fathers in the 70s said, “We are a movement. We want to be a movement, and we stick…” This is the identity you see still. Eliot Coleman would find it here. Maybe you saw it in the opening session. It was addressed a couple of times. We are still different, because underlying, we are still a movement. We have to defend this, including the integrity, which is so much in danger with serious day.

Linley Dixon 15:21
Well, and one of the biggest criticisms is, “Don’t speak out loud about the problems. Talk about them behind closed doors.”

Bernward Geier 15:28
Wrong. Wrong.

Linley Dixon 15:29
Tell me why.

Bernward Geier 15:30
You had your media exposure, you had your Washington Post stories, the news are out, and I rather talk about this myself and say, “We are working on it with this attitude.” “But then work on it, please, not just blah, blah.” Then having the media jumping on your back and saying, “Oh, we always knew it.” They then give the consumers the reason, “Oh, I always knew it. You cannot trust it. It’s not organic. They cheat me as they cheat with the…”

Linley Dixon 15:54
We have to announce that we are here to defend it.

Bernward Geier 15:56
You have to be loud and outspoken on the difference. It’s a battle. You have to challenge them. I’ll give you another observation I have. What happens in the US, people say, “Oh, does it come to him. We don’t get Driscoll’s berries, and we don’t get the eggs from the CAFO, chicken places, or chicken factories, I would call them. Or the – I don’t know – is it the horizon milk from the 5,000-cow farm? I’ve been a dairy farmer with 60 cows, and I thought I have a big farm or I make too many cows.

Bernward Geier 16:32
But what’s happening in the US is, of course, seen in the world. I know it for my friends, for example, in Australia who say, “Hey, we have now the debate starting that our – they also talk about industry – that our big players in the sector, they want to go to hydroponics.” They point fingers to the US and say, “They do it also.” So that’s why we have to defend and help you that we finally get this out, and the day will come, it has to get out, and we have to build the pressure. That this is not used by others than to spread these practices which has nothing to do with organic farming.

Linley Dixon 17:13
So do they call it hydroponics? Because the big hidden is, “Oh, it’s container growing.”

Bernward Geier 17:20
They’re not so far. I know it only from leading pioneers of the organic movement who are very concerned that this spills over. It’s not so much on the CAFO. They have so much space. They have so much free range there. The biggest farm in the world. How many Certified Farm? 1 million hectare. This is in Australia, outbacks. You need 100 hectares to feed the sheep. So, they are [inaudible 00:17:44] another words, but on hydroponics or container grown, of course, they would like to do it.

Bernward Geier 17:49
We know why they do it. It’s cheaper and it gives you much more freedom, but it’s definitely not organic. So, they’re very concerned. They also said, “Yeah, please, we have to stay together to defend this, because otherwise it’s coming over to our places.” So, it is another reason. It hopefully inspires you and gives you energy. You don’t fight just for the integrity of the US organic market. There’s more at the stake.

Linley Dixon 18:13
But do you think that we’re being loud enough that when the OTA says, “We don’t support hydroponic in organic.” Do you think that they know behind that we have our own version of hydroponic and it doesn’t include container growing? It is tricky here. They’re very…

Linley Dixon 18:31
It’s tricky. It’s very complicated, and this is nothing for a consumer, they will not understand the message.

Linley Dixon 18:36
They want us to get confused…

Bernward Geier 18:38
The [inaudible 00:18:39] for you is probably much easier on the animal sites, because there, the contradictions are much more obvious. For me, I’m an animal person. I studied animal production. I wanted to study animal husbandry, but it was named, and what we learned the subjects were animal production in a way, honest, but that’s not what I wanted to do in farming. I didn’t want to produce eggs and milk. That’s what we learned, how to produce a lot of eggs and milk. I wanted to learn how I keep my cow to be a happy cow that gives me a good milk, in the second step.

Bernward Geier 19:10
So, if you are loud enough, I think you cannot be loud enough. It’s not screaming. Loud could be misunderstood that we have to scream and scandalize. You just say, “We have a problem here,” and then you can tell your story. Especially to media. You can be a bit more complex, and they can see how they bring it across. You are opposition. You are the real opposition project. Also, you oppose the mainstream wrongdoing in farming.

Bernward Geier 19:46
In this, you cannot do quiet. You cannot do it behind doors. My experience is consumers honor this. They respect this. If you say, “We have problems,” and you have a better culture than we in America. America can make mistakes. You fall, you stand up, fix your ground and walk. Here, if you fail, you fail. Then you have failed, and that’s it. This may be helpful for you, that you say, “Yes, we have a problem we work on it if you fight, join us. Help us. Help us in our lobbying campaigns. Help us with financial support. More so help us by buying the real organic products.” So, ROP is also good, real organic products. Just about the name. You are movement.

Linley Dixon 20:35
So, there’s pressure for weak standards from the very beginning. If you have strong standards, we have adopted a whole farm standard, which, believe me, because organic in the US didn’t have whole farm, this is turning away 30% of the farms that apply. We have to say, “No, you’re not Whole farm.”

Bernward Geier 20:53
Yeah. We have this here. The EU allowed part time conversion, like you had organic wine business. You could do organic or conventional, and the rest organic. But this is minimal. This is marginal that this happens. We usually convert the farm, and then once you make the decision, it’s a conscious decision, and by heart, hopefully, if you found out spraying is something completely wrong, not for good for me, not good for the environment, not good for the customers, that you cannot. It’s schizophrenic if you say, “Yeah, but in the afternoon, I spray on that field.” So that doesn’t work.

Linley Dixon 21:26
There’s so much pressure to grow quickly, though. Real integrity takes time to develop a new label for the market.

Bernward Geier 21:33
That’s the reason why I’m in slow food movement. Very early I showed the slow food movement because this element of slow. Nature can be very fast. Multiplying of cells when a fetus develops. This is very fast. But when it comes out to working in the field and working with animals, you need time for that. Your cow shouldn’t just be a number out 5,000 cows, which only computer knows who it is. I always said the limit for keeping cows – my wife is also dairy farmer – I want to know each cow by name. Recognize this is Elsa, and this is Lisa, and this is Jane or whatever.

Bernward Geier 22:13
With 60, I was more or less at the point where I cannot recognize. My wife easily can do a hundred but then I think it will end somewhere down that line. I think the strategy, I’m not telling you how to do it, but out of my experience, how we, for example, lobbied for the EU regulation, was always…we said, “Here’s the bar from basic standards. Nothing beyond that.” We had to do some compromises.

Bernward Geier 22:49
But if you look at the EU regulation, this is the base in the [inaudible 00:22:56] for Naturland, for the other organizations. Then they add on to their things a bit more strict, a bit better ecologically. But this [inaudible 00:23:00] base not behind this. And USDA has not followed that. If they would have followed the IFOAM baseline, it would have not been possible to get your CAFO systems in. Have the chicken on balconies that they have fresh air or so. So, this helped us, in a way, to protect. It’s too much now to bear. It’s a nightmare. We created a monster.

Linley Dixon 23:22
Let’s talk about that. Is this why there’s a rejection of all the paperwork from the farmers and what can we do about that?

Bernward Geier 23:31
Yeah, it’s the farmers. It’s the inspectors. I live very close to the inspector world. My best friend living with us. We run the farm together. He has become an inspector. It’s so big and it’s so complex. The relation is very thick. Then the comment is 600 pages. How a farmer should deal with this?

Linley Dixon 23:54
What do we do?

Bernward Geier 23:54
We ha an overkill. We have now a move. It was named today by the vice minister in the opening of the BIOFACH. We have a commitment of the political to make things slim, easier, break down bureaucratic barriers. So the awareness is here, yet the action needs to follow. But we’ll work on it.

Linley Dixon 24:13
Somehow, it’s like ‘easier’ means less integrity in people’s minds. So, it makes it really hard. Then you have a lot of integrity. Our program, as an add on, it is so simple, and yet we have, like a 30% rejection rate. You just still don’t pass but it’s free and it’s easy, but we still have integrity. So how do we uncouple that? It has to be difficult to have integrity paradigm.

Bernward Geier 24:38
The integrity, I don’t think it depends on how complex the system is. The integrity that is you check what you do, and is this in line? Actually, the baseline for us is very simple. It’s the four principles of organic agriculture developed in a very nice participle process by the worldwide organic movement. There you have basically all in it.

Bernward Geier 25:03
Of course, then you need to go specific. What it means for a cow, what it means for a pig, what means on the field, what it means if you use natural pesticides, etc. You need to be more specific. It’s not so simple. But if you look at the problem we have with USDA, it’s already in conflict with the principles. yes. So, this dismantles that this is obviously wrong. Then you can make to a point, “This is not anymore organic.”

Bernward Geier 25:29
What are the four principles that…?

Bernward Geier 25:30
Health, ecology, fairness… you know the four principles. They’re not so known in the US. It’s something you could maybe take on and have to communicate. The principles where we talk about integrity is the fairness principle, very much. It has to be fair. It’s not fair. If you continue using hydroponic or container, this is not at all on their radar.

Linley Dixon 26:00
Even a monopoly, which is starting to have.

Linley Dixon 26:04
Principle of ecology, sorry. Ecology, health, fairness. That is something maybe in your strategy, and you see already how the organic world is ready to stay on your side. But use that and make these references to, “This is our roots.” That is principles. This was a wonderful process, and it was also very much shaped by farmers. We had, in the debate, farmers involved, business involved, scientists involved, to come out with this clearly, simple, small chapter principles, and they underlying, and you can make a check of balance, and if it doesn’t fit the principles, then never it can in the outline… Soil, that’s where we grow our food.

Linley Dixon 26:54
So, if you look to the future of organic in Europe, you don’t have these concerns of what happened in the US. You feel like the checks and balances are in place…?

Bernward Geier 27:04
Yeah, I feel quite safe. This is unthinkable for me to have what you have in the dairy sector, what you have in the poultry egg sector, what you have is, call it container or hydroponic growing. That is unthinkable here. I could not imagine. We would have the media so much on our back. We would have the TV scandalizing this a lot.

Linley Dixon 27:26
That’s because the movement has stayed…

Linley Dixon 27:28
Yeah. We have very alerted consumers. We have also quite good political support, because organic is very connected with the Green Party. We have a green party. We have said all the time, and for many years with [inaudible 0:27:43
] and they are all pro-organic, and they mean organic. They would never allow that this sneaks in. So, I feel quite safe on that side.

Linley Dixon 27:54
We would have to defend and this is the question, “Do we have equivalence between the standards and in the NASÖ or not?” I don’t think it has to be [inaudible 0:28:04]
equivalent, but it has to be in the baseline. You cannot have a contradiction or a conflicting development in the direction of the three key problems you have in the US…

Linley Dixon 28:18
Where are we with equivalence right now?

Bernward Geier 28:22
Actually, I’m in politics. I’ve been a co-founder of the Green Party, so I’m very well connected in the Green Party. I told them, “We need to help our American friends and the integrity worldwide for organic farming with the problem from the US by challenging them.” The agreement we had, it was actually signed and announced here, and a big thing here.

Linley Dixon 28:43
What year was that?

Bernward Geier 28:44
Oh, don’t ask me for years. Meanwhile, I would say 10 years ago. It was your deputy secretary of agriculture, Kathleen Marroquin. It was during her time. She was here. There was a big thing here. Big media during [inaudible 00:29:01], we had the same. This was not an issue at all. It was not apparent. But now it is apparent. I used my contacts to the European parliamentarians from the Green Party, also organic farmer. The strong guy in the European Parliament for Green Party is organic farmer. He was dairy farmer and he’s a politician. He’s not a farmer anymore, but he knows where he comes from.

Bernward Geier 29:27
This helps us also to as a safeguard. They would, immediately help make political pressure, being in government or not. You don’t have this equivalence. So, you have two big parties. They are not so much concerned about industrial high-tech agriculture. But we have, nevertheless, also our challenges. We, as I mentioned, I’m not a dogmatic person and I want organic food for all. I don’t want too much discussion in the public confusing consumers that there is Bio and that there is super Bio, and there is super, super Bio.

Bernward Geier 30:12
For me, there has to be Bio, and this has to be clear. It has to be based on the principles and reflecting the IFOAM basic standards, which are coming from the movement, from us, from farmers, scientists, and regulation has to mirror this. But on the market side, the market development, of course, we have a rush. The market is attractive. The market is big. The biggest turnover with organic product is now with the discounter, Aldi. I think you have Aldi in the US.

Bernward Geier 30:47
He sold, by far the biggest volume of organic. It used to be Lidl, which is a cooperative supermarket chain. But because Aldi turns so much with much less products on the shelf, in the diversification of the products, but it turns so much because we people, German people, especially, like to buy cheap food. Organic is not necessarily cheap there. This is also a sign. They could say, “Oh, we take it easy. We do EU, Rio. We buy it anywhere in the Ukraine, from far away in China, as long it is EU, it’s fine.”

Bernward Geier 31:25
They know the value, and they do actually use it very clever in their marketing strategy that they partner with Bioland, in the case of Lidl, with Naturland, in the case of Aldi, that they say, “Oh, we…” They give the image and they give the consumer specific, “I actually buy the same product, which is true, which I can buy an organic shop.” As long it has the Naturland label. It’s the same quality. It has the same regulation, the same standards behind rigid certification and inspection and verification broken behind.

Bernward Geier 32:07
As long as I can think and talk about organic markets, etc., and this is since the early 80s, I always want that we cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altar of market expansion. I want market expansion. I want to go mainstream, but there is a red line which we cannot step over. In your case, definitely, the red line has been stepped over various times, and the critical issues.

Bernward Geier 32:35
It’s so far apart and it’s so easy to understand. If you know little about farm, it’s so easy to understand. I have had organic dairy farm. As I said, we considered it a big farm. The average farm in this time, when we had 60 cows, was the average farm size of a dairy farm was 12 cows in the 70s, 80s. So, we thought we have a big farm, but you cannot have 5,000 cows, if you give them access and grazing, you cannot have it organic. It’s impossible. Everybody can understand this.

Linley Dixon 33:11
Let’s say they’re following the standard, what role does organic have in, say you have a cooperative of 50 growers that are all producing, and then you say, “No, no, no. I drop you. These guys are meeting the standard, but we can get it from one supplier.”

Bernward Geier 33:26
Of course, the trade wants it easy. Wants a constant supply, want’s volume. For us, the challenge is, then we have to organize us as a farmer – in cooperatives, for example. Good example, let’s look at the coffee sector. The biggest organic farmer producer organizations had been coffee cooperatives in Mexico, like ISMAM, like UCIRI, 7,000, 8000 farmers. All small, but together, they had really volumes. That works.

Linley Dixon 33:52
It works until what happened with Horizon in Danone. It’s, “Oh, it’s more expensive to go to all these individuals, dairy farms… We drop you, we just go to the…”

Bernward Geier 34:04
One place, of course, it’s so much easier. It’s on the cost side. Of course, more cost-efficient. But if you throw out the baby with the bathtub, if you go in this super size, it’s… dairy sector is a bit complicated. Let me give another example. I have seen a lot of organic farms around the world. In my privileged 18 years director of the world organization, I’ve seen so many super wonderful farms. I have seen also a lot of pig farms. The very best pig farm I have seen is in Denmark, with standards above the National Organic Standards, significantly above.

Bernward Geier 34:44
You know how many sows he has? 1,800 sows. Raising 30,000 piglets, integrated production of sows and piglets, all on one farm. It’s on different farms. It’s one management, one family. It’s a family farm, 500 years traditional family farm in that family. It’s the best. They took them back to forest. They give them a forest. They have mud bath in the forest. It’s unbelievable. It works only on sandy soil, so the conditions have to be right. But that impressed me.

Bernward Geier 35:15
So, it’s not a matter of size or volume. That’s why I made the comment, “What is the biggest organic certified farm, 1 million hectares? You would say, “Impossible.” Everybody I tell, “1,800 sows.” “Impossible. It cannot be organic.” “30,000 piglets cannot be organic.” What makes the difference and what matters is, what do you do? Is that what you do organic? In that case, it’s super organic, because it’s more than organic standards. So we should look more or like the one million hectare farm. It is organic. It’s so extensive, you cannot be more extensive than farming in the desert. Carefully, of course, you can overdo it in the desert also.

Linley Dixon 35:59
What is it about the sandy soils? Why does it have to work on sandy soils?

Bernward Geier 36:03
You know what pigs do on a piece of land? They plow it. In order to keep it, it needs that the water is very fast down, that it’s not muddy and etc., and they don’t destroy it and they rotate. They have to rotate all the locations. That system in that way, would not work. Also, in the terms of numbers, they have a lot of space. For the sows, it’s paradise. For the piglets, it’s super.

Bernward Geier 36:30
Diversity is big. The birds are back. It’s so wonderful. It’s popular trees that is a bit monoculture. But in a way, he has done agroforestry, if you thought, has a lot of potential. Of course, we think about farms and potatoes, or trees and potatoes, or series or growing, but it’s the combination in agroforestry, is animals. Keeping animals. Animal husbandry with forests. You can do it with cows also. But pigs is a good example, because they come from the forest. If you give them the forest back, they’re very happy, healthy, and of course, great.

Linley Dixon 37:02
There has to just hold the line on where the standards are. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with scale.

Bernward Geier 37:08
This exactly the point. You bring it to the point. Scale matters. Like in the cow example I gave, I think there is a certain number of cows. When you don’t have the parental relationship anymore, you cannot be custodian of the cows, you cannot be the steward of the animals you raise, so I think there’s a limit.

Bernward Geier 37:26
In the case of pigs, of course, he doesn’t know all the sows. But the cows, every day a person comes – their personal contact – every day. When they are fed and looked after, etc. But, definitely it’s not a matter of scale. It’s what you do. I say you can do ROP, your standards. You can scale up. You can do it in bigger units, and then be better on the market, competitive with other because you produce scale. It’s nothing wrong with scaling up, if you scale the right thing up. Not the wrong thing.

Linley Dixon 38:04
People say, “Well, are you going to scale?” I much prefer the concept of replication, instead of getting one entity so big…

Bernward Geier 38:14
I’m still building very much in cooperatives, unite. Like on my little farm. We breed animals. We are organic certified farm and breed Icelandic horses. We don’t eat them. We have manure. We have more manure because we keep it quite a number of animals. We buy organic food in but our manure now goes to a farm which has no animals. So we think the cycle is just bigger with our neighbor. But we’re still working fully on the principles and understanding of organic having rotation, having a cycle. The straw comes from that farm. He’s a grain grower, and he gets his organic matter to have a fertile soil. Also, his crop rotation – leguminous plants in the rotation. But he gets it with our manure, which is quite a lot with 80 horses. So, in this way we…

Linley Dixon 39:02
I got one for you. This is a tricky one. You have an heirloom tomato, and it has a two-month season in August and September. The rest of the year, should there be no heirloom tomatoes? Or what happens is, we say, “Okay, we’ll bring the heirloom tomatoes up from Mexico…” Heirloom is the big beef steak, delicious tomatoes. There’s a couple questions here.

Bernward Geier 39:31
Heirloom is the old varieties.

Linley Dixon 39:34
They taste amazing, and there’s a short season for them. In order for them to ship far away, they bruise, all those things, so they pick them green. Then they give them shelf space. Sticker says, “Organic heirloom tomato.” People buy them. “Oh, this tomato doesn’t taste good.” Now we’ve lost our market for…

Bernward Geier 39:53
Because of the imported…

Linley Dixon 39:54
Because people think they don’t taste good anymore, and they don’t know when they’re ready. Do you think that we should say, “It’s okay, let’s have a crappy heirloom tomato to fill the market.” Or do we just say, “No heirloom tomato, unless it’s a real heirloom tomato, and it comes from local because they have thin skin, they get bruised. You have to pick them when they’re ripe…”

Bernward Geier 40:18
Of course, you have to tell the story of the wrong tomato, which tastes lousy to the really good tomato. But then I come in with my slow food world. We talk about appropriate seasonal products. Same with strawberries. I’m not eating organic strawberries in April because they’re tasteless. They come from Spain. They are maybe having not-seen chemicals so they can be called organic, but the taste is…and I’m loving so much berries and strawberries. For me, it’s when I have strawberries growing in my garden, that this is the season. If I don’t have enough, I may buy something in that season. The rest of the year I’m not. Also tomatoes. Very rarely, maybe on Christmas we have a little sin. We buy imported tomatoes from Spain or so. But no, this is exactly a good example. It’s not tricky, I think.

Bernward Geier 41:04
Well, here’s the tricky thing. So because most of the stores say, “Okay, we have to have organic strawberries.” Let’s just assume they’re soil-grown. The businesses have so much power that they say, “Ah, you have to keep buying from us even during the season of the local season.” So, there’s no shelf space anymore for the local. That is what is happening.

Bernward Geier 41:31
I understand this problem very much. See, people have begun to have an understanding of seasonality of fruit. Older people still have the knowledge that there has been a season, but this is very much lost. In berries it’s quite easy. Of course, it’s unfair if you have the local berries. Like in Spain when we have tomatoes, there’s no market for the Spain, because they’re pre and after season. They dump it. It’s not even worse to harvest them, because they get no price, because then we have all our sun-grown tomatoes in Germany or in Central Europe. This is crazy. If you sacrifice taste for the convenience of having a long season of these tomatoes, who do you serve?

Linley Dixon 42:21
But sometimes you’ve been able to protect the German tomato farmers to have a local product. We have not been successful on that. The example would be, the Spanish company has become so powerful, they say, “No, you have to buy our tomatoes…”

Bernward Geier 42:36
They supply still. They try to sell. They are on the market. But then I think our tomatoes are competitive.

Linley Dixon 42:42
We don’t even get the space.

Bernward Geier 42:44
This is a bit different here.

Linley Dixon 42:46
How do we make it work?

Bernward Geier 42:48
Consumers have to ask for it, or consumers have to buy direct.

Linley Dixon 42:51
The role of the consumer.

Bernward Geier 42:54
Consumer cooperatives or the organic supermarkets, if you would, have similar change. With them, I think you could get understanding, and say, “Please, when there’s a season…” they have a preference. Like I’m very closely connected to the second largest retailer, partner of Naturland. A 10-year partnership. A fair partnership. It works well to the benefit. It’s win-win. The Rewe had been the biggest seller in volumes and in money, terms of organic for a long time before Aldi took over. They have a preference.

Bernward Geier 43:27
Whenever we get Naturland quality for their own brand, they have their own brand. 70% of the products in a supermarket are own brands. Are not brands of other brands. It’s much different to conventional market. The ratio is very different. So it’s typical for organic that much goes into own brands. But they say, “If we can get it in organic, and in Naturland quality above EU standards, we opt for the Naturland quality.” So they build up a quality image. So if you go to Rewe, can be very likely, especially in fresh produce and dairy, you’re going to get not just Bio organic, you get Naturland. Or now Demeter. Demeter came in, but they sell now to Demeter.

Linley Dixon 44:07
Somehow, we have this ever-creeping consolidation. Then with that consolidation comes so much power. Right now we have…Albertsons want to merge with Kroger, so they say, “We’re competing with Walmart.” But Albertsons and Kroger are the ones who…

Bernward Geier 44:26
It’s grow or perish. It’s grow or perish in farming, it’s grow or perish in the business. In the retail, it’s grow or perish. But this is…it’s a question when we debate this, we often ask us, and I’m a leftist. I never been a communist. When it became a system in power, it became corrupt. But we say, or we ask us, “Can you do the right thing in the wrong system?”

Bernward Geier 44:53
I think this is your challenge. You do the right thing, no doubt, but the market and the reality of capitalistic market how it works today, of concentration, of taking overs, of being super, super efficient, of being super, super in the cost side, super, super cheap to produce or to bring it to the shelf. How much space do we have for your product – for your real organic product – in that world?

Bernward Geier 45:21
So, one alternative is, it’s a parallel process. Never either/or, it’s as well, and you do it with lot of your farmers but sell direct. They have a very wonderful culture of farmer markets. There you have been ahead of us. We’re coming up. We learned from you also. We have wonderful, a hundred percent organic farmer markets, and now more and more, but you have this tradition. So, you have to build this up more and more, because that’s the place where you can tell the stories. You make nice in the summer; you make nice open days. You know all this. You have it, and that’s wonderful.

Linley Dixon 45:58
It only grows so far, because everybody goes to the grocery store every day.

Linley Dixon 46:04
It does makes sense if I in downtown Manhattan, to drive out 40 miles to my nice little farm in the countryside…it’s a bit more efficient than all the customers coming out to his place. So, it’s not the solution for all. Your challenge now is, of course, because you’re ready to scale up, and you see the interest, and there is a need, there’s hopefully even a cry for the right organic or real organic products and quality which you offer. But a jump, I don’t know if you jump from the niche market to mainstream market, but we have this challenge as we go, definitely from niche to mainstream market, in the volume we turn now.

Bernward Geier 46:46
Baby food has been, 20 years ago, already 80% organic. It’s now 100% organic. You cannot sell baby food that’s not organic. So we are on that way. We have this experience, but this is not possible with farmer markets and with farm gate sales. You have to find ways, and you have to find your place on the shelves – to get in the shelves. The way for this is consumers have to go in the shop and say, “I want this.” They bring back the lousy tomato, the so-called heirloom tomato and say, “Hey, sorry, this tastes awful. Keep it. I don’t want it.”

Linley Dixon 47:26
So very educated, very activist consumers.

Bernward Geier 47:28
It doesn’t need many. It needs educated consumers that can talk, that are not aggressive, and they just tell it, “That’s not what we want.” At least here, people who are in the retail business, they want to sell what people want.

Linley Dixon 47:46
And the farmer association to back the consumer.

Bernward Geier 47:50
Of course, they want cheap they want to have their margin, they get the bigger share. We can argue that – maybe not argue. It’s obvious – but we say the consumer is king. So then use your power, king and queen. Use your power. Show you’re the king. Tell them what you want. You say, “This what you bring here, you may call it, it may look like heirloom, but that’s not. So, I don’t want that.” Then, of course, you don’t buy it and say, “But please give me the alternative to get the real heirloom tomatoes when it’s the season, when they taste good.”

Linley Dixon 48:23
It’s chicken and egg, because the consumer can’t demand for anything, because the farmer doesn’t grow more in order to supply the wholesale, because they don’t have the shelf space.

Bernward Geier 48:33
Yeah, I know. It is a bit of chicken and egg. But we do have chicken do, we do have eggs. They belong together. So, it’s not a contradiction between chicken and egg. It’s the synergy. Without eggs, we have no chicken. With chicken, we have no eggs. So, in that case, yes, we try to find our markets direct and in very fitting market channels, like the farm markets, but the shelves…

Bernward Geier 49:05
I have a friend who produced a wonderful organic farm in Nova Scotia. Actually, he immigrated from Germany. We studied together. He was such a super vegetable grower, and he managed the farmer… He sold on a supermarket, a weekly market in Halifax. Did half of his turnover just on this one Saturday market. But he had more and more supermarkets where he said, “Try my products.” He gave consumers a taste of flavor, and the people who bought on Saturday in the market realized, “Oh, I can buy Wednesday, my farmers products in my supermarket.” He had two avenues of marketing then.

Bernward Geier 49:47
He had the supermarkets during the week to sell, and then the people came also for the fun of going to a market, and of course, all the joy that comes with shopping there. That is a good example, I think. He didn’t say, “I put all my eggs in this one basket that I sell on Rewe. I diversify.” Again, it’s diversification, as you said.

Linley Dixon 50:08
Let’s give a ton of hope, 100% organic. You see that path. You think it’s working in some places. When you look to the future, you see only growth?

Linley Dixon 50:18
Well, of course. Now here we are. I love it because I work a lot on it, and I’m I must say I’m an optimist. If it’s not us, we’re optimists. Ask people who work with nature, who respect nature, who love nature, who should be optimists. This is, for me, not a question. It’s getting more difficult to be optimist, I admit, but I am not giving up. So, this is my starting point. But I did a lot of fact-finding research in my privileged life to be out in the world. I came across, and this is really rapidly growing, and a lot of places where we have people, at least on the way to a hundred percent, having the commitment to a hundred percent or have achieved it.

Bernward Geier 51:05
The first big example, which we then recognized with the IFOAM Organics International and Rob Hunsel Award, the One World Award, was the federal state of Sikkim in India. It’s a small state. It’s your Rhode Island of India, you could say. There a visionary governor, our chief minister said, “Let’s go organic a hundred percent. He got the farmer on his side, but he resourced them. He educated them, he trained them in compost, [inaudible 00:51:30] compost, etc. He helped to create markets. They became the first state in the world, the first political structure, that was a hundred percent organic. So they said, “Yes, this can be done.”

Bernward Geier 51:41
Okay, it was on a small scale, because you cannot easily scale it up. But if you look at India, there is, at the moment, millions of farmers going organic. Millions of farmers. Many have made the commitment, “We want to follow the way of Sikkim.” Then my friend, Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM in Egypt. They are super fantastic project.

Bernward Geier 52:00
Demeter is on the journey to a hundred percent organic and I’m sure he will get there. I work now in the Philippines with the mayor who created peace in the war-torn area, Islamic rebels. He got 14 commanders out of the jungle, with 5,000 rebels, and they became organic farmers.

Bernward Geier 52:20
Now this municipality of Kauswagan with 13 barangays (villages), a hundred percent organic. There mayors can rule. He banned GMO. It’s illegal. You may go to jail if you introduce GMO in the municipality. People are fully behind. They reduced poverty. Poverty was the reason for the conflict, not Muslim-Christian, and hunger. From 80% poverty level in Philippines, we would starve to death in what they define poor and poverty to me by just 9% and he works on the last few percent.

Bernward Geier 52:53
So, Wherever I look, there is these examples. We have regions in Switzerland, a Canton – this is a bit between a state and a county – 60% in Graubünden, Salzburg, Austria, a federal state, 50%. We have a lot of places. Austria, as a country, has reached 30%. That is it as a country.

Linley Dixon 53:14
The story is that there were more imports in order to…like they weren’t feeding themselves…

Bernward Geier 53:21
No, this is diverse development. When talk about this percentage of organic farming, we talk about this. This is the big issue. I can’t even understand America in this regard. I think you have 1% of your farming organic, but you have the biggest market in the world. Hello. Something is wrong. So, it’s Mexico, Canada…

Linley Dixon 53:41
Now it’s Peru for…

Bernward Geier 53:42
All over the world, Chile. The berries come…

Linley Dixon 53:45
We’re are importing 60% of our fruits and vegetables now?

Bernward Geier 53:49
Also the grain – where you had the scandal swift for the CAFO systems – that came from Ukraine now and on the way to the US, became organic. So, it has to come this way. You have to convert organic farming on the way to a hundred percent. Then you develop the markets parallel. It’s not that you create the market like you do in the US – huge, successful, the products – and then you have to bring them from all over the world. That’s the wrong strategy.

Linley Dixon 54:16
Because you go where it’s cheapest. So, for cotton, we had all of these organic cotton growers, and then they went to where the environmental standards were so low that they could just… all the dyes and the cleaning of the cotton just went into the river. Or where the labor is cheaper.

Linley Dixon 54:31
The organic cotton production India, number one producing organic cotton country, had a lot of issues with GMO. Because with the Monsanto GMO cotton, Tanzania picked up. There is talk about a hundred percent vision. There is two, three states or regional districts in Tanzania where there is cotton growing. There are 400,000 EU standard organic certified farmers. So, we can go big. It’s more and more happening in the world.

Linley Dixon 55:03
The rationale behind this, for me, a hundred percent, it has to be step-by-step. The first strategic step is: we have to come to the point that pesticides become illegal. We have to ban pesticides. That is easier sell to consumers who is against stopping pesticides. You get easier, people on board. Then we have a more level playing field, then it’s actually easier. Then the step to organic is shorter and it’s a more level playing field, then you can develop unprecedentedly. It would be a strategic step to come to. We have come close.

Linley Dixon 55:33
We had a public poll in Switzerland. It just barely missed it, to ban precise, a hundred percent. We have the EU, which set 50% reduction of pesticides. Can you imagine the Bayer-Monsanto – now Bayer and Monsanto is one – how alerted they are if this happens? So, this is a strategic step, but then at the same time we have to do much more for organic farming. So, setting goals, realistic goals, step-by-step. Realistic goals, ambitious goals. Now we have 25% in EU. Imagine this: in the US we have 1%. Setting a policy and as a target for the whole EU to come to 25% organic by the year 2030. This is in six years – in five years now.

Linley Dixon 56:15
This subsidizes certification so that it doesn’t cost farmers?

Bernward Geier 56:19
Yeah, if you have more certification, it can become more cost-efficient. In the southern, in the Global South, we have developed with IFOAM, the Internal Control System. I have been in cooperative – banana cooperatives, chocolate cooperatives – that brought the certificate for each farmer, down from $400, $500 $600 to $7 a farm, with the Internal Control System – peer review.

Bernward Geier 56:41
For the local markets, we have the Participatory Guarantee System. So the organic movement and IFOAM mainly, have done a lot to make for small farmers, the place. You have, of course, PGS. It’s also in the US, it’s in Australia, it’s not just for the Global South. So, this is one thing.

Bernward Geier 56:58
So, you have to set the goals. Of course, then there has to be the means. This is if you in the policy, say, “I want this,” then you put the money in that this can happen. You have to solve it, support it. It has a own dynamic. It can grow by demand and market, but it needs support. We have good examples here. The government does a lot big programs to promote…We had it today in the opening big programs to promote.

Bernward Geier 57:25
So, if that comes together, then we can advance. We may not get the 30% in six years. But if it’s 27% I’m still happy because you’re on the right road. Now, to my hundred percent vision, to conclude that, for me, this is not a question of whether we can or whether we should. I think we have no choice. If we don’t come to a system to produce our food sustainable, and for me, a very early phrase I coined in IFOAM was, “Organic agriculture is sustainability put into practice.” You could say it’s sustainable put into the field and the animal farms.

Bernward Geier 58:04
So, it’s not a choice. We have to go with common sense. The damage we do, be it biodiversity crisis, be it climate crisis, everything points out that the conventional way is wrong and brings us further into disaster. We have the answers, so we have to scale up the answers. That’s why, for me, a hundred vision, it’s not just a crazy idea, it’s not weird, it’s the thing to do. Then your famous model from Obama, “Yes, we can,” here, we say today at BIOFACH this year, yes, we do. We do. We want it, we do it.

Linley Dixon 58:41
Yeah, thank you.

Bernward Geier 58:43
This brings my optimism. This fits my optimism. I see it’s happening. I see it more and more happening. Countries in the Global South are probably faster than we, because they realize there’s nothing to enjoy about GMO for them. Look at the complete failure of Bill Gates’ and Rockefeller’s Green Africa and Ukraine revolution – a complete failure. What they tried to do with GMO and chemical inputs, failed completely.

Linley Dixon 59:10
It’s not still going on?

Bernward Geier 59:12
No. It cannot successful.

Bernward Geier 59:14
I thought that they were still getting…

Bernward Geier 59:18
Their own report showed that it was a disaster. That was a complete failure. Not much talked about – the report, but it shows us that at the end, it’s not a matter of choice. Our famous organic pioneer hero, Felix, has pointed it out: It’s either organic or it’s not – the future of our food. That’s the job we have to do. The good thing is fun to do it. My life, 50 years in organic, so much joy, so many positive things, so many beautiful people and so much enlightenment, so much motivation, so much energy.

Linley Dixon 1:00:03
Keep that movement alive.

Bernward Geier 1:00:03
Team up with your farmers that do the right things. Help them, support them. That makes you happy and your farmer. If your farmer is happy, then you are happy. You cannot be happy if your farmer goes bankrupt because he has unfair competition.

Linley Dixon 1:00:18
You got keep igniting the movement, yeah?

Bernward Geier 1:00:21
Absolutely.

Bernward Geier 1:00:22
Thank you so much for your time. It’s good hope.