Episode #227
Kate Mendenhall: Defending Organic Integrity Nationwide

What happens when organic standards are no longer guided by the farmers who built the movement? Kate Mendenhall, Executive Director of the Organic Farmers Association, joins us to talk about the urgent fight to preserve organic integrity. From fighting greenwashing and corporate lobbying to ensuring farmer voices are heard in Washington, Kate shares how OFA is working to keep organic standards aligned with soil health, transparency, and real values.

Our Kate Mendenhall interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Linley Dixon interviews Kate Mendenhall, Spring 2025:

Linley Dixon 0:00
Hi, Mendenhall. Welcome to the Real Organic Podcast.

Kate Mendenhall 0:06
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Linley Dixon 0:07
We probably met back at the NOSB meetings even before the Organic Farmers Association, I’m guessing, but we go back a few years, huh?

Kate Mendenhall 0:14
Yes, it’s nice to see you.

Linley Dixon 0:21
Tell us a little bit. First, you have your own organic farm in Iowa. I’d love to know a little bit about how you got interested in farming and what your farm looks like now before we dive into the political work that you do with the Organic Farmers Association.

Kate Mendenhall 0:35
Yeah, sure. I always wanted to be a farmer. I didn’t grow up in a farming family, but I lived in a small town in northwest Iowa, and there’s farming all around me. But I did grow up during that farm crisis, and so I think I felt the emotional impact of a lot of family farms closing and consolidating, and the stress around that. There was a lot of conservation around me, and so there were a few farms that were grazing animals on pasture.

Kate Mendenhall 1:07
I liked the way that organic melds a lot of my interests: conservation, ecology, and social justice. I always wanted to be a farmer, but no one in my family thought that was a good idea, just coming out of the farm crisis at that time to enter farming. I went to college in Maine and met all these organic farmers there. It was eye-opening for me.

Kate Mendenhall 1:07
I hadn’t really seen a food farm before. I had never seen a farm where they grew vegetables or sold direct to farm-to-consumer markets. A lot of possibilities just opened up. But I studied organic agriculture in grad school, interviewing farmers all over the world, and I was testing out different kinds of production that I may want to do someday. When the opportunity arose, I moved back to Iowa. I knew that I wanted to start my own farm.

Kate Mendenhall 1:40
So, we have a small farm by Iowa standards. We have 18 and a half acres. It’s called Okoboji Organics. I love animals. I was vegetarian for about 12 years, but then I felt like my understanding of farming and food production shifted, and so I wanted to manage my own livestock to feed my own family, but also my community.

Kate Mendenhall 2:31
We raise certified organic pastured pigs and poultry – both chickens and turkeys – and then we have a few laying hens. That’s a growing business. Just this year, I’m excited to be partnering with another female farmer who’s starting her own enterprise on my land growing organic vegetables and fruit. We market it all locally out of the barn, from our little farm store in the barn.

Linley Dixon 3:01
It’s incredible to me that you grew up in Iowa, and you had to go to Maine to see people growing food for us to eat. I’m curious. Have you read Austin Frerick’s “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” the book where he talks about Iowa? He talks about the transformation of Iowa in his lifetime. Have you witnessed some of that – the popping up of CAFOs all over the landscape?

Kate Mendenhall 3:26
Oh, yeah. I live deep in that section of the state. Iowa has – I think we’re number six in the country for the number of certified organic farms. There’s a lot of organic production in Iowa. But where I live, it’s a little bit more flat and has more of a feeling of southwest Minnesota and the plains’ topography, and so it is well-suited to many, many thousands of acres of corn and soybean production and hog confinement buildings.

Kate Mendenhall 3:58
So, yeah, things have definitely shifted. The livestock options that used to be in every county are no longer there. The infrastructure for managing your own livestock is diminished, but there are a lot of very vibrant organic fruit and vegetable farms across the state – just not necessarily in my county and surrounding counties. I’m kind of an anomaly here. I think I’m one of three certified organic farms in my county, and definitely the only female farmer.

Linley Dixon 4:30
Oh, wow. The two farms I think of that were part of the pilot project with the Real Organic Project were… I think, let’s see. She’s in Decorah, Iowa. I don’t know how close you are to either Radiance Dairy, which was Francis Thicke’s farm. He’s now transitioned it to someone else and is retired, or Hannah Breckbill, who is in Decorah, Iowa. Are you close to either Fairfield, where Francis was, or Decorah?

Kate Mendenhall 4:55
Iowa is a big state, so Fairfield is about six to seven hours from me. Decorah is about four hours away. [inaudible 0:05:04] I went to college in Maine, and we flew into Boston and had driven for two hours and already gone through three states. We had to pull over and check the map because we were used to driving really long distances in just one state.

Linley Dixon 5:17
Okay, their area was really hilly. I’m really interested in why Iowa. Why has that state transitioned away from the smaller, maybe 160 acres – something that comes to mind for some reason – family farm to now just extreme acquisition of your neighbors? Is there something unique to Iowa that’s kind of made that happen?

Linley Dixon 5:43
Because the parts I remember driving through were kind of hilly, which often tends toward more grazing and organic operations, because you can’t get that huge machinery through. But it sounds like the topography is quite different. What is it about Iowa that has brought all the pig CAFOs there and everything?

Kate Mendenhall 5:57
Yeah, I think that’s somebody’s PhD project to answer completely, but Iowa used to be much more diverse. We used to be in the top three in the country for the production of wine grapes. But back in the 50s, we were hit very hard by the 2,4-D drift. Early on, a lot of diversity was destroyed from 2,4-D drift.

Kate Mendenhall 5:57
Then in the 1970s – 1980s, we got hit very hard with the farm crisis and encouragement to scale up production, invest in big machinery, and a lot of family farms went out of business and had to consolidate family land to survive, or people moved off the farm, which left farms available to be purchased and consolidated into bigger farms. I think that was probably the biggest shift.

Kate Mendenhall 5:59
Some of the past checkoffs really hurt the industry too – much more diversified, independent pork farms were hurt by the pork checkoff, which put a lot of them out of business with unfair competition and having to pay into an industry that was really pushing consolidation and the industrial pork market. We haven’t had great luck.

Kate Mendenhall 7:15
Our topography in much of the state, where it is flatter, lends itself to large machinery, and big acreage. We are just below Interstate 90. Interstate 80 runs right through the middle of the state, so we have good transportation routes out east and west. But still, the heart of Iowa agriculture is here. I just think that the emotional impact of the farm crisis had a huge impact on our appreciation and our celebration of rural life and what it means to be a farmer.

Kate Mendenhall 7:54
I think that farmers should be celebrated as heroes. We’re feeding our communities, and also I think particularly organic farmers – we’re stewarding clean water, air, and providing healthy food for our families. That’s something to really celebrate, and I don’t think we celebrate it enough.

Kate Mendenhall 8:12
Folks weren’t encouraged to continue family farms, but were encouraged to go into agribusiness or other fields, and so we lost a lot of that support, vibrancy, and market diversification, which led to industrial ag. Plus, we have a pretty powerful land-grant university with a lot of agribusiness around it. The support for family farms in the same diversified way hasn’t been here as it maybe continued in other states.

Linley Dixon 8:45
Unfortunately, it seems like it’s a similar story in other states too. I’m curious; your life is kind of like mine now, where you’re juggling farm life and advocacy for organic farmers. Can you tell me a little bit more about your journey toward advocacy? You said you went to graduate school. Where did you go? What did you study?

Kate Mendenhall 9:06
I studied biology in undergrad. Then I wanted to learn more about organic farming, but I was looking at sustainable agriculture programs at the time. This was just before the National Organic Standards were released, and there weren’t any organic-specific graduate programs at the time. When I was talking to some of the existing programs, some professors were on board with the idea of organic agriculture, but some professors seemed to have been put in the program but didn’t believe in it.

Kate Mendenhall 9:31
I didn’t want to be in a position where I was sitting in the classroom and having to defend my love for organic and my belief that it was the direction of agriculture that our country should be heading in with professors who didn’t agree. So, I decided to design my own master’s program through a small college that unfortunately didn’t survive the pandemic – Goddard College in Vermont.

Kate Mendenhall 9:51
It had had a long history of alternative, progressive education, and so I decided to put my very small laptop in my backpack and travel to eight different countries, working on organic farms, studying from farmers about what farming meant to them in their different countries, under different political situations, and then working alongside them while I was studying from my stack of books.

Linley Dixon 10:19
We got to go there a little bit. Can you tell me about some of the farms that you saw, what countries you went to, and what impact they had on you?

Kate Mendenhall 10:29
I was young, in my 20s, so I didn’t need much to be happy. It was a lot of sleeping in crowded hostels and wherever I could find a place for my sleeping bag. I farmed in Mexico on a very small farm, which served the tourist industry of Cabo. I talked to some expat farmers, some of the Del Cabo tomato grower cooperative, and met with them in Mexico. I looked at some of the local farming but also at farms serving the tourist industry there.

Kate Mendenhall 11:10
Then I went to Chile and learned about exports. I worked on an export asparagus farm there and interviewed a few different scales of agriculture, including diversified small-scale farms. I learned from a professor at a university who also did a lot of his own research on his own farm.

Kate Mendenhall 11:32
I spent three months in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. In New Zealand, I took a permaculture course, and I studied on a diversified farm growing mushrooms and vegetables and using the sea for fertilization with seaweed. In Australia, I worked on a biodynamic farm and really focused on biodynamic production, and went to the Sydney farmers market with this farmer. Again, I interviewed a few different kinds of farms while I was there.

Kate Mendenhall 12:06
In Japan, I worked on a farm that was doing traditional rice production and interviewed, I think, at least three or four farms in every country I was in. Then I finished in Europe. I was in the UK working on a sheep dairy and on a cow dairy, then in Italy on a sheep dairy, and in Spain on a diversified vegetable farm, and then on an export organic olive oil farm.

Linley Dixon 12:38
The only ones I knew there were Del Cabo, just because they’re part of real organic too. Were there any farms that really taught you lessons that you’re still carrying with you now for your political activism for farmers? Were these all organic farms, first of all, or were there some big industrial models to compare organic to?

Kate Mendenhall 12:59
I think most of them were certified organic. If they weren’t, some of them were more like subsistence, so they may not have been certified. This was a long time ago – it’s over 20 years ago. Our national organic program was just getting started at the time.

Kate Mendenhall 13:16
I think what I took away from that experience most is that farmers all around the world are farming organically for very similar reasons. They believe in the practices, in soil health, and in making a positive impact on their communities and creating a clean environment for their families. That was an affirming common theme as I went, but also I saw how different political structures supported or hindered farmer success.

Kate Mendenhall 13:49
I think that’s what drove me to want to return to the United States and work on policy. It was very evident to me growing up during the farm crisis that policies did not support family farmers, and I wanted to provide families with more support and options so that they could be successful growing food for their communities and supporting their families on farms, and that it could be a career that people felt proud of, and that their communities appreciated them for doing. Policy was a place where I felt like I could make a big impact.

Linley Dixon 14:21
How did you find the Organic Farmers Association then?

Kate Mendenhall 14:23
I was in upstate New York for 10 years. I was working with the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. New York is such a diverse state, so it was a fun place for me to learn for about 10 years, and I learned about all different kinds of agriculture. It’s a big dairy state, so I learned a lot about dairy and made a lot of great connections, but what I liked most of all was working with all of the different NOFA chapters and MOFGA.

Kate Mendenhall 14:23
That whole Northeast region was collaborative. We did a lot of collaborative work together and shared a lot of success stories and things that didn’t work so well, and tried to support each other as a region. I saw through that experience that we needed to work more collaboratively as a nation to better support farmers across the whole country, that we had a lot of lessons to learn from each other, and there was so much information to share to strengthen these state- or region-wide organic farming efforts, and that there were a lot of places where, nationally, our voice would be stronger together.

Kate Mendenhall 14:23
I left New York because I wanted to start my own farm in my home state of Iowa. I met a lot of great Iowans in New York State and had the realization that some of us needed to go back. You have to have folks who are also entering your home state and contributing back to your home community. That’s why I wanted to farm.

Kate Mendenhall 15:46
As I was returning and apprenticing on a local farm here just to learn more about what it was like to run a livestock farm in Iowa, farmers and some organizations were meeting to talk about creating something like the Organic Farmers Association. They pulled me in to help with some surveys of farmers across the country to see if farmers wanted an effort like that to start.

Kate Mendenhall 16:08
So, we got enough responses back that farmers were interested – or they were maybe interested – and so we decided to go forward. I had some time as I was starting my farm to be able to support that effort, and I grew into the organization, but it’s been such a reward to help found this organization that is my dream job.

Kate Mendenhall 16:30
I feel so committed to supporting organic farmers to be successful and hearing farmer stories from California to Maine to Georgia about the different kinds of markets and political systems that they’re working in, and how we can learn from each other to create a stronger national organic movement that supports farmers and holds them up as the heroes that they are.

Linley Dixon 16:53
Yeah, it’s interesting. When I was first going to those meetings, the first time was at the National Organic Standards Board meetings. That was the first time I’d heard the distinction between, “Well, you’re part of the organic movement. Then the organic industry is over here,” as if they were two different things, and people really thought of it that way.

Linley Dixon 17:12
Why do you think that kind of division came so late into the game? When was OFA formed?

Kate Mendenhall 17:18
In 2017.

Linley Dixon 17:21
Okay, so 17 years after the passing of the regulations, and of course, OFPA had been passed 10 years before that. Why do you think we felt like farmers’ voices weren’t being heard at the time, and the Organic Farmers Association was needed?

Kate Mendenhall 17:38
The Organic Farmers Association is the fourth time that an effort like this was tried, and the first three times did not come to fruition. When we were starting the Organic Farmers Association, a lot of folks who were involved in the earlier effort reached out to me, shared their stories, and supported us through some advice and a gratitude for trying it again, and they felt like it was necessary.

Kate Mendenhall 17:38
We worked to bring in a lot of organizations from the beginning. I think what really helped us start was that – it’s hard to start an organization, as you know – but the Rodale Institute stepped up and served as our fiscal sponsor for the first three years of our existence.

Kate Mendenhall 18:20
They made sure that we succeeded, got through all of the organizational development steps, and secured some funding to provide additional staff. They also helped us with our first website and the type of organizational development support that gave us a very strong foundation so that when we were ready to go on our own, we could do that successfully.

Linley Dixon 18:45
All right. Let’s talk a little bit about what OFA does.

Kate Mendenhall 18:50
We were created by certified organic farmers to be a united voice for certified organic farmers on the national stage. Specifically in policy, but also to respond to market crises, serve as a voice in the media, and represent certified organic farmers.

Kate Mendenhall 19:11
We aim to translate what’s happening in policy to organic farmers so they are informed, can respond effectively, and understand what changes are coming down the pike for their businesses. We are also working to ensure there is a place at the table for them.

Kate Mendenhall 19:23
The Organic Farmers Association, like I said, was created by farmers. We believe that farmers founded the organic movement in the United States, and they deserve to be at the table, driving its future. That’s the pathway we’re trying to create for them.

Kate Mendenhall 19:38
We create opportunities for farmers to tell us what their policy challenges are, or just what the challenges are on their farms, and then we work with them to identify those policy priorities. We also have farmer work groups where we can really dig into an issue like crop insurance, for example.

Kate Mendenhall 20:00
We have a very active work group that is identifying the problems within crop insurance for organic farmers, developing solutions that would help their businesses use the program successfully, and then we communicate those needs to the appropriate USDA agencies or to Congress to create policy fixes that enable farmers to succeed and use the tools available to them in ways that are truly effective for their businesses, because organic farms operate differently than conventional farms, and the same tools don’t always translate.

Linley Dixon 20:30
So, if you’re a farmer and you’re new to the organic landscape, there’s the Organic Trade Association and the National Organic Coalition. How does the Organic Farmers Association fit into those two, and what’s your role that’s different maybe in terms of the voice you’re representing? I know it’s very farmer-centric, but where was the real need?

Linley Dixon 20:30
Was something happening that made it feel like those voices weren’t loud enough? I’m just curious because I’ve talked to some farmers who are involved in both of those organizations, and they feel like that is the political arm of the organic movement. I’m curious why the OFA feels like it has a different slant than what those two are representing.

Kate Mendenhall 21:14
We work very closely with both of those other organizations – the National Organic Coalition and the Organic Trade Association. I think we’re much more powerful when we work together on policy issues. We share a much stronger and more present enemy, so it behooves us to collaborate. But the National Organic Coalition is a coalition of all representatives of the organic movement.

Kate Mendenhall 21:37
They have environmentalists, consumer groups, farmer groups, and food businesses as part of their collective. They have to make decisions by consensus in order to move forward. It’s a great model, but because it’s based on consensus – and includes all those trade groups and stakeholders together in one room – they may not represent farmers in the way that farmers want to be represented on an issue.

Kate Mendenhall 22:09
Similarly, the Organic Trade Association typically represents larger farmers. They do have some smaller farmers as members, but they primarily represent the large trade group – large companies that are buying from farmers, processing products, and selling packaged goods on grocery store shelves. These companies are most often buying ingredients from farmers.

Kate Mendenhall 22:34
The interests of buyers and farmers aren’t always aligned. Buyers want to have affordable ingredients, and farmers want to make a living wage and be successful businesspeople. So, sometimes we need to be separate in order to have those two voices heard clearly.

Kate Mendenhall 22:48
We try to bring our different representations to the table early so we can work out any differences and come to a compromise or consolidated stand that we can all agree on going forward together. But we can’t do that without farmers having a strong, represented voice at the table. That’s what the Organic Farmers Association brings.

Kate Mendenhall 23:10
We are always asking farmers what they want and what they need. When we don’t know, we ask our farmer members in particular; only our farmer members have a vote. We are really trying to authentically represent farmers’ voices in every opportunity, at every table that we’re invited to.

Kate Mendenhall 23:30
Congress calls us on organic farmer issues and wants to know what farmers think about different things. Before the Organic Farmers Association existed, it wasn’t always clear who they should call. We are present in D.C. and nationally to represent the viewpoints of farmers – what they need, what their high priorities are, and how their businesses are faring under different political climates.

Kate Mendenhall 23:58
I think we’re stronger as farmers, having a voice like the Organic Farmers Association behind us.

Linley Dixon 24:05
Even amongst farmers, you might not always get agreement, but you have an interesting democratic process for how you bring issues to the table. Then it culminates in this awesome fly-in, where we get to hang out with each other and have a good time, in addition to meeting and talking to our representatives.

Linley Dixon 24:20
I’m curious, what have been some of the issues that farmers have prioritized year after year? What are some of the big ones?

Kate Mendenhall 24:28
It’s been pretty consistent since we started in 2017. Stopping organic import fraud and increasing NOP enforcement of the regulations, uniformly and equitably, has been a really top priority for farmers from the beginning. They want to operate in equitable marketplaces, they want to be successful, and they don’t want to be undercut by fraud. We all rely on organic integrity and consumer trust, and so it’s a really high priority for farmers that that be upheld.

Kate Mendenhall 24:59
Similarly, prohibiting hydroponics in organic certification has continually been in the top three priorities since that was, I think, introduced to our poll in maybe 2019. We’re continuing to see that as a high priority for farmers – they want to see organic remain rooted in the soil. We’ve continued to look for where we can represent that viewpoint at the National Organic Standards Board, in Congress, and in different opportunities for dialogue.

Kate Mendenhall 25:32
Climate change and diversity in organic agriculture have come up. Fair markets and addressing consolidation in the organic market have also been in the top five. Every year, we update the farmer priorities that come in through our annual survey. You can check on our policy page and see what the top 10 priorities are this year. But the top five have been pretty consistent since we were created in 2017.

Linley Dixon 26:00
Let’s dive into that first one – import fraud has been an issue since I’ve been involved for the last 10 years as well. It has always risen to the top. I thought that maybe we were getting on top of it a little bit. Then we get back together, and it seems like, year after year, we still have stories where the ships are making it through that are likely fraudulent.

Linley Dixon 26:24
We even had a story where one of the buyers tested, just voluntarily, and found fraud. It’s like the system we have – the checks and balances, either through the NOP or the certification programs. I think we have to, by law, do 5% or something like that for testing. The operations need to be tested by the certifiers.

Linley Dixon 26:50
It’s kind of one of those frustrating things where we think we’re getting wins, and yet it still seems to be happening. Where are we with that now, in your opinion, with import fraud, particularly in grains?

Kate Mendenhall 27:03
I think we’re definitely making progress. Talking to farmers who were a part of the creation of the National Organic Program – imports weren’t even a part of the conversation. They never envisioned, 20-some years ago, that the market would be this large and that we would be dealing with imports.

Kate Mendenhall 27:21
The program, from the beginning, wasn’t designed with the type of enforcement – or with collaboration from Customs and Border Protection – needed to monitor organic at the border. The Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule, which we advocated for – along with a lot of members of the organic community – was just implemented last March, in March 2024. So, we only have one year under our belt, but a lot of loopholes were closed.

Kate Mendenhall 27:47
Now, importers and exporters have to be certified. A lot more handlers came under certification, and there are more checks and balances across the board. The National Organic Program has really been working with Customs and Border Protection and USDA APHIS to understand what certified organic is and how to look for fraud.

Kate Mendenhall 28:09
Now, we have import certificates as a result of the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule. So, when a shipment is coming into the port, the folks checking import vessels, rail, or trucks know what to look for. The National Organic Program is starting to get calls, and people are checking. I think it will take some time for the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule to put its teeth into more of the problem, but we’re definitely making progress there.

Kate Mendenhall 28:38
At the same time, the U.S. is the largest organic consumer market in the world. Our market here in the United States is over $70 billion. There’s a lot of incentive for folks to sneak in product as organic because the return is a lot greater. We’ll continue to see that problem.

Kate Mendenhall 29:01
What folks in compliance at the National Organic Program say is that it’s just hard to always follow the criminal’s next move. So, we have to continually be adjusting our enforcement. We’re working on some legislation now, led by farmers Amy Brooke and Nate Paul – both grain farmers. Amy’s from Nebraska; Nate’s from Montana. They bring similar but different perspectives.

Kate Mendenhall 29:23
This is a pilot program focused on organic feedstuffs – your typical grains and oilseeds – as a starting place. The goal is to have the National Organic Program identify what the high-risk imports are within feedstuffs for the year, what criteria folks at the border should be looking for, and what percentage needs to be tested for residue.

Kate Mendenhall 29:50
It’s just one marker. It’s not going to be the golden ticket to stop all fraud, but we have to have a lot of tools in the toolbox. We need a more robust approach to protecting U.S. organic farmers who are working hard to follow all the rules, undergoing intense inspections annually, and handling a lot of paperwork. We want to protect those markets and all the hard work they’re putting into that.

Kate Mendenhall 30:15
This new piece of legislation is called OIVA. It was introduced this year by Senator Ricketts from Nebraska and Senator Smith from Minnesota. It would require annual testing and an annual report to the Secretary of Agriculture detailing what was tested, how much fraud was found, and how much was clean.

Kate Mendenhall 30:35
It’s designed to give us a better sense and create more of a process for residue testing at the border – protecting the market so that domestic farmers are operating in a fair market.

Linley Dixon 30:48
I think one thing that a lot of people don’t realize – you mentioned APHIS. I have a plant pathology background, so that is the department that checks imports for possible pests and diseases. Whether it’s organic or not, if you have something that’s on their list of, like, “No, we don’t want this in our country. It’s not here yet,” what they do is they spray the entire shipload.

Linley Dixon 31:12
Then what needs to happen is that the product can no longer be sold as organic anymore. That’s something that raises a key question: who has to pay the burden of that loss in marketplace value? Does that fall on the farmer? The importer? Who takes that hit? Also, as a consumer, how do you ensure that if you think you’re buying organic, you’re not unknowingly eating something that’s been sprayed and still labeled as organic?

Linley Dixon 31:41
A couple of points here – this highlights the importance of cross-institutional communication and understanding. That’s just starting to happen. The USDA is working with APHIS. I’ve heard APHIS is being seriously defunded and cut. What does that mean for organic integrity? In terms of, have these things have been sprayed, have they then been put into new boxes and labeled conventional? Who oversees those transitions? Who pays for those costs and adjustments?

Linley Dixon 32:14
Has some of that been worked out? Were we starting to work it out? Do you have any sense for where we are at the border and how things may have changed with the new administration?

Kate Mendenhall 32:22
I think we’re making real progress. OIVA was the next step. There are a lot of federal agencies that interact with agricultural imports for many reasons – invasive species is one of them, and making sure those are kept out. Over the past five years, through the progress of the National Organic Program working with this interagency task force. They’ve now established a process where, if an organic product is fumigated, the stickers – like those on peppers – are peeled off, and that product is not sold as organic.

Kate Mendenhall 32:54
Everyone now knows the process and is more aware of the restrictions on organic products. What we’re concerned about is the reduction of some of these key USDA agencies – the National Organic Program being one of them, Customs and Border Protection, and APHIS. All of these agencies are working together on this effort. The National Organic Program has finally gotten enough staff to do the work that’s needed, and now we’re asking it to do even more.

Kate Mendenhall 33:28
Any reduction in that small agency is really concerning. We know that through deferred resignation offers, we’ve lost anywhere between 20% and 30% of the National Organic Program staff. Just recently, in April, the Organic Trade Association, the National Organic Coalition, and the Organic Farmers Association – with 942 farms, 130 organizations, and 307 businesses – signed a letter to USDA Secretary Rollins asking her not to include the National Organic Program in the next round of USDA workforce reductions. Those employees are essential to protecting this market for farmers and the trust of consumers.

Kate Mendenhall 34:21
We haven’t received a response yet. We are hoping that we can avoid losing anyone else from the National Organic Program because they are already stretched thin. It’s concerning for organic integrity. It’s concerning for the rising volume of organic imports we’re seeing come into the country and our ability to actually monitor them. It’s something that we’re watching closely as a community and discussing strategies for.

Kate Mendenhall 34:47
But we are also asking USDA and the Secretary not to lose any more staff in the National Organic Program. There is currently a hiring freeze, so we know that the 20% to 30% reduction can’t be restored right now. Hopefully, we don’t lose anyone else.

Kate Mendenhall 35:02
The return on investment for supporting the National Organic Program is very high. For every $1 invested in the program, we see $3,000 reinvested in the U.S. economy in retail value. It’s a good return on investment. That’s taxpayer money working efficiently and serving an important purpose – for American farmers and for American consumers. It’s a high priority for us.

Linley Dixon 35:33
Yeah, especially the import fraud. There’s so much corn and soy production here domestically that it’s hard to see that because you can see direct correlations. When we had greater organic imports, we were seeing a reduction in the production of organic – the conversion to organic – in our own country. At least knowing that it’s not fraudulent makes such a big difference for what’s happening to farmers here.

Linley Dixon 35:58
I think that’s one of the things that, universally, across the board, everybody believes in. It’s bipartisan – let’s just make sure that U.S. farmers are competing against real organic grain production.

Linley Dixon 36:13
Aside from that, do you…? I remember when I went into Senator Bennett’s office, I was so surprised by his response. We’re basically exporting our agriculture right now. It keeps growing. Sixty percent of our fruits and vegetables are now being imported. I was talking about this as a concern.

Linley Dixon 36:36
There are a lot of concerns. Some of it is just – in times of crisis like COVID – are we going to be able to feed ourselves? There are some larger issues. But just for our local businesses and things, I was talking about this particularly with tomatoes, and how the price point just to be able to play has been ever-decreasing. I can’t sell to the grocery stores. It’s shrinking my farm back because the imports are so cheap. It’s just driving me away from those markets.

Linley Dixon 37:08
I was talking about that with him, and he said, “Well, for every import, we try to create an export opportunity for our farmers.” And I just thought, “Oh my gosh, that’s so not how the organic community thinks.” First of all, small farms aren’t built for the export market. Wouldn’t it make more sense to get my tomatoes on the local shelf, as opposed to just having to somehow…

Linley Dixon 37:34
Okay, you’re bringing tomatoes in from Peru or Mexico or wherever, and they’re on my local shelf. And then somehow I’m supposed to get big enough to export back to Mexico or wherever? It just seemed a little crazy.

Linley Dixon 37:47
I’m curious – we just had a farmer gathering in California, and we were talking about: has the movement somehow been impacted by our success? Are there thoughts about how we get that spirit back – of what organic meant in the beginning?

Linley Dixon 38:09
I feel like, as it’s grown, organic just means “here’s food that does not have prohibited substances on it.” To you, what more does organic mean? To the farmers that you’ve worked with, what is that larger vision of organic? And I guess the second part would be, how do we get some of that back?

Kate Mendenhall 38:30
Great questions. First, to touch on the globalization of organic, I don’t think it makes sense for any country to have that import-export model. We all benefit by having more robust local food systems. I think we saw during the pandemic that we can’t rely on our national system of agriculture – a globalized system does not always work. It’s not a great national security model.

Kate Mendenhall 38:57
We, and other countries, would be better served by more local, independent farms growing food for their communities and supporting diversified agriculture. Where we can be innovative and grow new crops more locally, we should. There’s always going to be global trade – we like to eat things from all over the world – but let’s focus that on things we can’t grow locally, and vice versa for other countries.

Kate Mendenhall 39:33
Through my many years of talking to farmers from all over the world, I’ve found that farmers are typically farming because they love to get their hands in the soil. They want to grow healthy food for their communities. They believe in clean environments for their families and their neighbors.

Kate Mendenhall 39:53
I don’t think the industrialization of agriculture and the soul of the organic movement is changing in the farmer’s vision. I don’t think we have great infrastructure remaining, or policies that support local and regional food systems. We need to do a better job of rebuilding those.

Kate Mendenhall 40:14
I have to drive a far distance – and it’s not great for the stress on my animals – just to get them to a processing facility. It wasn’t always like that. I could bring my animals much closer, two or three decades ago, and that was very common across the state of Iowa, and much more common across the country as well. We’ve lost a lot of the infrastructure for local food systems. We need to bring it back.

Kate Mendenhall 40:39
There have been policies to try to do that, in fits and starts, but it would benefit our country, our communities, and our national food security if we could take a step back from our existing models and relocalize everything. That’s a big task, and we’ve been on this sort of industrialized train for a long time. But what works in a factory or manufacturing model doesn’t necessarily work for food that needs to feed people all across the country – especially perishable products. We’d be much better served with a local food system.

Kate Mendenhall 41:16
How do we get there? I think that’s part of why we need a stronger Organic Farmers Association. We are advocating for those types of policies, along with allied organizations working with family farmers on the conventional and regenerative side, who also benefit from regional and local food system movements, policies, and infrastructure rebuilding.

Kate Mendenhall 41:41
We just need more pressure from the public. But we also need support from Congress – identifying the types of local jobs this would bring and the kind of expertise required. Again, we need to return a lot of dignity, honor, and appreciation for the people working in our food system – from harvesting crops to working in a butcher shop, from working in a slaughterhouse to driving the truck picking up milk.

Kate Mendenhall 42:07
All of those folks are so important to feeding our communities, and they just don’t get the appreciation and reverence they deserve.

Linley Dixon 42:18
I have a friend in Germany. She was talking about organic, and we were talking about things like the processing and how interconnected it all is. I think we often forget about the distribution and how the food system is so much bigger than just the farmer and the end eater, and how organic certification just allows that structure.

Linley Dixon 42:37
She used the most beautiful terminology that has kind of stuck with me. It’s funny because English is just one of the many languages she speaks. She said, “You are creating an organic landscape.” I was talking about how even an organic pig, for example, has to eat organic feedstuff. If you collect food from a local school and that food isn’t certified organic, you’ve then lost the ability for that pig to be an organic pig. That’s when she used this phrase – “organic landscape.”

Linley Dixon 43:09
Then, if the organic pig farmer has an affordable feed source that is certified organic, you’ve got a clear ally in getting organic food into schools. We can all work together if this landscape of interconnectedness weaves together what organic can be. Without each other, we can never get to that endpoint, because we all depend on each other all the way through.

Linley Dixon 43:41
Even in creating an add-on label like the Real Organic Project label – if we don’t get the mills involved too, to separate the Real Organic product – we’re never going to be able to see that end product on the shelf. That concept of an “organic landscape” is a really beautiful thing.

Linley Dixon 43:56
A lot of eaters aren’t necessarily aware of how many steps there are between the farm and the source. Of course, we try to shorten that distance as much as possible. But even for a local livestock farmer, you still have to use an organic processing facility in order for that animal to be considered organic in the end.

Linley Dixon 44:18
Anyway, any thoughts about how complicated the system is and what we’re up against in terms of creating an organic landscape here in the U.S.?

Kate Mendenhall 44:27
Well, we have to make new allies, and we have to bring in more players in the food system to understand what organic is and want to include organic in that whole system. I think that the USDA investment in the Transition to Organic Partnership Program and the prior administration was aimed toward that effort. We brought in so many new entities to help farmers learn about organic practices and decide if they wanted to start that transition-to-organic journey.

Kate Mendenhall 44:55
At the same time, because they have different connections, they’re now looking for more processors in new areas, and more cold storage facilities that would support certified organic products. We have to invest in this new system. The TOPP program helped put some of that new infrastructure and new players into place. We’ve created a wider network to better support farmers throughout the whole food system, but continued investment is needed.

Kate Mendenhall 45:26
The TOPP program – we just heard word – was one of the programs that had been frozen by the current administration as they conducted their review. But it just came out of USDA review and will be continued through the end of the program, though the deadline will be moved up.

Kate Mendenhall 45:42
Some of the real core aspects that organic farmers need from TOPP have been identified, and we’re hoping they can be instituted in the next Farm Bill under this current administration, with their own stamp on supporting organic farmers and our local and regional food systems going forward.

Kate Mendenhall 46:01
These are dollars that stay in your community and help revive rural communities. We have to preserve rural jobs, and rebuilding these food system components for all different kinds of agriculture across the country helps make that possible. It’s a great investment for our country overall.

Kate Mendenhall 46:23
We’re hoping that the next Farm Bill will happen and that organic and the infrastructure that TOPP started putting into place can continue. We have the largest consumer market in the United States. We can serve that local market a lot more with local products. But we have to invest and help farmers along that journey – understand certification, keep certification affordable and accessible to farmers, and look for ways to make it risk-appropriate and scale-appropriate so farmers aren’t being asked to keep records that don’t apply to their farms.

Kate Mendenhall 46:59
That those inspections and records should be relevant to the type of operation and scale and shouldn’t become too expensive or take too much time for farmers to participate in the program. We’re making progress there, and we just need to keep the momentum up.

Linley Dixon 47:15
One of the programs that’s popular with small farms is the Organic Certification Cost Share Program. Have you heard anything about whether that’s going to carry on this year?

Kate Mendenhall 47:24
It’s one of the things that this coalition is working on – advocating for the Organic Farmers Association, the National Organic Coalition, and the Organic Trade Association, alongside many of our state partners. We’re all really advocating for the continuation of the Organic Certification Cost Share Program.

Kate Mendenhall 47:40
It is what they call an “orphan program” in the Farm Bill – it doesn’t have mandatory funding. When the Farm Bill gets extended, it has to be specifically funded in that extension. It was included in the 2024 extension with additional funding, but it wasn’t included in the 2025 extension. The Organic Certification Cost Share Program is not currently funded for 2025.

Kate Mendenhall 48:01
We know that that’s going to impact small farms in particular, and we may lose some farms because they won’t be able to afford certification. That’s disappointing to me. There are farmers who are working so hard to provide all these great environmental services. In countries like Denmark, the government pays for all the certification fees so that more farmers can participate, and so that the voluntary process of paying to be certified organic isn’t a barrier to being counted.

Kate Mendenhall 48:33
We need more support for all that work that organic farmers are doing – for our water, our food, our air, our wildlife habitat, and for creating healthy soils and healthy soil microorganisms, and also for keeping our soil on our land. There are so many great environmental services that farmers are voluntarily providing without any compensation in return – and they’re paying for the privilege to provide the public with all these great services.

Kate Mendenhall 49:06
We could better serve organic farmers. They’re doing a lot on a little. The Organic Certification Cost Share Program is a very small program in the Farm Bill, but it has a really big impact on farmers being able to be counted, stay in the program, and have access to new markets.

Kate Mendenhall 49:21
It’s a high priority for us. We know it’s going to affect farmers if it’s not funded. We’ve been advocating through appropriations, but I don’t know if we will get there for 2025. But we will not stop asking for it.

Linley Dixon 49:33
It was at $750. It’s now at a minimum about $1,800 to get certified per scope. Meaning if you have crops, or livestock, or handling, you would have to pay that three times if you have all those things. We were advocating for it to go up to $1,500, and so now we have nothing. I think it’s going to impact the number of small farms that are involved. That’s definitely one that I think, across the board, everybody feels really strongly about.

Linley Dixon 50:02
It does always seem so backwards that the people who aren’t spraying these horrible things are the ones that are having to prove that they are organic. We always think that that’s so backwards. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the government was visiting people, spraying the chemicals, and making sure that they’re doing it responsibly, and that those chemicals are being labeled? That seems like it’s in an alternate universe.

Linley Dixon 50:22
Right now, we’re fighting for what we can do as an organic community, and that seems to be labeling ourselves, as opposed to getting what I think everybody would much rather have – just information about what is being sprayed on the conventionally or chemically grown food.

Linley Dixon 50:40
You, Kate, had one of the best answers I’ve ever heard. The OFA has this awesome opportunity to go to the USDA. We were sitting with the National Organic Program, and they said, “We don’t want organic to be an elitist food item. We would like it to be affordable.” They were justifying hydroponics as organic as a reason why they want organics to be more affordable.

Linley Dixon 51:06
I don’t know if you can recreate the moment, but it gave me chills. I’m wondering if you have a response right now, in this moment, to that: “We don’t want organic to be elitist. We want it to be affordable. Therefore, we’re going to compromise what it means.”

Kate Mendenhall 51:20
I can try. I think that the Organic Farmers Association believes that organic farmers deserve to earn a living wage for their farming. It’s very hard work. They deserve to pay their farm workers a living wage for their work. It’s not organic farmers’ responsibility to solve our social problems that create the need to keep food prices so low – because people aren’t making enough money to pay the cost of production that it takes for folks to raise clean, healthy food.

Kate Mendenhall 51:53
Our system is not working, and it’s not organic farmers’ responsibility to fix it. I think organic farmers want to be able to provide affordable, healthy food to their communities, and they’re doing that in many cases, in many different ways – being really creative, selling things for less than the cost of production in some cases. They have sliding scales for community-supported agriculture, where people who can afford to pay more are covering for people who can afford to pay less.

Kate Mendenhall 52:21
We’re creating a lot of opportunities to try to meet communities’ needs, but it’s a larger problem that should not be the responsibility of organic farmers to fix. We need Congress to be looking at prioritizing healthy food for everyone. Organic farmers are working hard to provide as much as they can. We could be producing more food, and we could be helping more farmers transition to organic so that more is available right here at home. And the more local you can keep it, the cheaper – it reduces shelf time, processing costs, and storage.

Kate Mendenhall 52:57
All of that, in the end, is a large investment of time. It will take many years to get us back to where we were when we had more of a functional local and regional food system. But that’s the way to do it – to increase food security and increase our nation’s food security.

Linley Dixon 53:16
I think of organic integrity as like this bubble, and there are so many ways we could get at it. The OFA has taken that policy angle to fight for organic integrity through policy. The Real Organic Project is looking at marketplace access by creating an add-on seal.

Linley Dixon 53:39
When I talked to Francis Thicke, who was part of the Real Organic Project at the beginning, he thought, “We’re just going to need the Real Organic Project for a short time. As soon as we win a few of these big issues, like confinement, the chicken porches at the time, and the origin of livestock – which we seem to have closed that loophole now – but as soon as we tick off a few of these things where we’ve gone wrong, we won’t need the Real Organic Project.”

Linley Dixon 54:15
Then recently, he said, “I realized that that was flawed, that we’re always going to need the Real Organic Project because there’s always going to be this industry pressure to weaken the standards.” How do you see the role of the Real Organic Project in the future?

Kate Mendenhall 54:34
My farm is a part of the Real Organic Project, and I know a lot of other folks involved in the Organic Farmers Association have decided to sign on as well. I think organic farmers are trying to farm as close to nature and mimic ecological systems as they can. That is a really complex, diverse system to strive for.

Kate Mendenhall 54:58
Organic farmers are always learning. We’re always striving to do better. We’re always striving to perfect our systems, provide better pest management, and create more ecologically balanced agricultural systems that exist in the culture of farming, food, and our ecology around us. That’s what I think the Real Organic Project is doing. It’s creating a higher expectation for those farmers who want to strive for it.

Kate Mendenhall 55:25
I do think, at the same time, we need to continue to work as an organic farming movement to maintain high standards of the National Organic Program, and we can do both at the same time. It’s important that we do both at the same time.

Kate Mendenhall 55:41
It’s going to be maybe a particular kind of consumer that’s going to want to see all those additional efforts by a farmer that meets their vision of what organic is, and the Real Organic Project makes it easy for them to find those farms. I’m hoping that we can see more and more Real Organic Project farms highlighted in grocery stores, and it becomes just really standard practice.

Kate Mendenhall 56:02
At the same time, we need to continue to educate consumers and farmers about strong standards, improving the standards, and keeping the push for rulemaking. I think that’s going to be one of the challenges for this administration because they want to roll back regulations. But organic is different. It’s a voluntary regulation that organic farmers are signing up for. We’re asking for it. We’re asking for more regulation so we can clarify the standards that we’re presenting to consumers. We want to keep moving forward.

Kate Mendenhall 56:32
Unfortunately, we just heard that the Agricultural Marketing Service is looking to rescind the more recently introduced mushroom and pet food standards. That’s not what we need right now. Farmers want more clarity around what they’re doing to provide these markets. They want new markets. The new pet food standards opened up a whole new pet food market for folks – especially for cat food, because it allows the addition of taurine, which is an ingredient that cats need.

Kate Mendenhall 56:57
We want to keep improving the markets. We want to push National Organic Standards Board recommendations into rulemaking and evolve the National Organic Standards. We need to do that.

Kate Mendenhall 57:06
Unfortunately, the government works at a much slower pace than we do on our own farms, but we need to keep the pressure on and keep encouraging the administration that these voluntary regulations should not be included in the one-in, ten-out rule. For every one new regulation, ten regulations have to be taken off the plate. We need to keep adding organic regulations. These are voluntary. They don’t fall under the same bucket.

Kate Mendenhall 57:27
I think ROP farmers are so energized and passionate about the way that they’re farming. They’re the perfect farms to join in the type of advocacy work that the Organic Farmers Association is laying out. It’s been so great to have, formerly, Dave Chapman – a founding member of the Organic Farmers Association – and to have you, Linley, a part of the Organic Farmers Association in D.C., advocating for your own farm and other farmers in your region.

Kate Mendenhall 57:55
Every Real Organic Project farm should be a member of the Organic Farmers Association so that we hear your voice. We hear your policy priorities, so we’re representing you in D.C. and lifting up the values that you hold dear that are part of the Real Organic Project and the future of organic.

Linley Dixon 58:13
Sometimes I feel like there’s a lot to learn in the history of the organic movement, in terms of why we needed a law in the first place. So many times I hear, “Oh, why don’t you just go off and create your own standard? Why do you have this USDA Organic as a funnel in order to be a certified Real Organic Project?” There are many, many Real Organic farms out there that just choose not to get certified because they don’t need access to markets.

Linley Dixon 58:38
I’m curious if you have any thoughts about the need for government’s involvement in organic, and why that USDA Certified Organic – no matter how bad it spirals – why having the government as part of creating what organic is, matters. What does that offer the organic movement? What did the people who fought for those laws in the first place see that maybe we’re forgetting right now?

Linley Dixon 59:10
It’s like, “Oh, let’s just walk away from it. It’s so corrupt.” That reaction that some of us have – to just abandon it all and start over – what might you want to tell them, given that you’re so aware of why you’re fighting for USDA Organic to continue to have meaning?

Kate Mendenhall 59:26
The organic movement in this country started from organic farmers working with folks who – it’s different in different states and regions – but farmers, in many cases, got together and wanted to create a certification agency to represent the way that they were farming. Different people came into that, but farmers have always been a part of management committees and advisory boards for those certification agencies.

Kate Mendenhall 59:47
It was farmers and members of the certification agencies that approached the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a government program – for a public-private partnership – because it had gotten so big. It was very hard for consumers to navigate slightly different standards from one region of the country to another and to make sure that organic over here meant the same thing as organic over there, within our large country and our large organic market.

Kate Mendenhall 1:00:13
I think that it was a good decision. It’s been a challenge to navigate our creative, organic spirit – very passionate about values – into a government system, but we have managed to create a sense of democracy through that system. We are quite organized as an organic farmer movement in response, especially now with groups like the Real Organic Project and the Organic Farmers Association to respond to things and keep it honest.

Kate Mendenhall 1:00:46
In other countries where they don’t have a government organic program, they’re not managing import fraud and farmers’ needs as well as we are in this country. We are the largest global market of organic products, and it would be very hard to manage that organic market without the government’s involvement. We would not have access to Customs and Border Protection. We would not have access to APHIS at the ports.

Kate Mendenhall 1:01:16
What I have found through this evolution of monitoring and trying to curtail organic import fraud is that as soon as a shipment comes in, leaves the port, and gets distributed into the organic supply chain, it’s almost impossible to get it back. We would lose all of that oversight.

Kate Mendenhall 1:01:34
The government plays an important role in protecting domestic certified organic production because it’s so involved in trade. It also helps ensure that what we say is organic is consistent across the country. We have all agreed and are required to be reviewed on a regular basis. Certification agencies are accredited on a regular basis, and they are required to follow the same National Organic Standards and interpret them in the same way.

Kate Mendenhall 1:02:00
There have been cases where certification agencies have not been following the interpretation in the same way, and they have had to make changes as a requirement to stay a certification body, or they have left the program. That’s a result of the National Organic Program.

Kate Mendenhall 1:02:15
We need to continue to fund it. A defunded or underfunded National Organic Program cannot do its job. We’re a very small program. It needs to probably grow as our market continues to grow. We’re talking a lot about this under the current climate, where funding for federal positions is being reviewed and reduced. But in this case, the National Organic Program is protecting 28,000 certified organic operations that are domestic, and we need that oversight.

Kate Mendenhall 1:02:52
It’s a very efficient program. I think there are only 85 employees – or there were before we lost the last 20% to 30%. The return on investment for our economy is huge. It’s necessary. We need to advocate for it. We need to keep progressing in the number of regulations that we’re putting out, and that all goes through the government process.

Kate Mendenhall 1:03:15
I think there are a lot of improvements to be made in the National Organic Program, but I think overall, we’re on the right track. We just need to keep working to improve. Keep the farmers’ voice as a part of that process, making sure that farmers are continually, annually, sitting in that room with the National Organic Program lead, and that they are hearing farmers’ stories about what’s going on on their farms. What are their challenges? What things are they asking the National Organic Program to improve?

Kate Mendenhall 1:03:41
They learn a lot by hearing farmers, and that’s part of why bringing farmers to Washington, D.C. every year is a core program of the Organic Farmers Association. We will continue to do that, and we will continue to advocate for a U.S. Department of Agriculture that supports and protects organic farmers.

Linley Dixon 1:04:02
When you were talking, you were describing one of the reasons why we had the OTA was in order to make sure that the standards were consistent all the way across. Right now, we don’t have that situation with hydroponics. We’ve got these certifiers that are saying, “We won’t do it.” We didn’t have that situation with CAFO porches. I think the USDA and Bay State – there was a lawsuit over whether or not they had to certify these porches. The USDA said, “Yes, you do.”

Linley Dixon 1:04:29
We have these big integrity issues where the organic community and the USDA have not seen eye to eye, and it’s been really fracturing to organic and to the community. It’s a lesson, I feel like, to the USDA: if you want this thing to maintain integrity, you’d better listen to the constituents, because it does create chaos among the organic world when we have these areas where we can’t see eye to eye.

Linley Dixon 1:04:55
I always like to point out how in Europe they would never certify a chicken porch or hydroponics. The organic industry has continued to grow and has a much higher percentage of organic land. There is something to be said for integrity and growth going hand in hand, instead of it being one or the other.

Linley Dixon 1:05:18
This concept of this big tent – and then we can grow organic to be massive – but then I think people walk away from it because they’re not finding the food that they would like to find. There is this argument for higher integrity and growing the movement hand in hand.

Kate Mendenhall 1:05:33
Oh, for sure. Organic is definitely a values-based market. Farmers are farming this way because they care about their environment, animals, consumers’ health, and their own family’s health. It’s a values-based market, and the government does not always operate that way. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s probably the right match, and it continues to require a lot of advocacy, consumer and farmer oversight, and pushing for higher standards and integrity. But I do think it’s the right framework for a system moving forward. It’s a little wordy, and we need to keep working on it to improve it.

Kate Mendenhall 1:06:19
But we do have opportunities for farmers’ voices to be heard. We need to keep amplifying those voices, making sure that farmers are always at the table, that these areas of integrity – and just places where we don’t agree within the organic movement – are being talked about. We have discourse around it. We’re looking for ways to fix the problem. I think that is happening.

Kate Mendenhall 1:06:42
We saw porches finally being addressed through the Organic Livestock & Poultry Standards rule. We have continued to bring hydroponics forward to the National Organic Standards as a priority issue. I think, hopefully, in the next five years, we’ll see some response to that.

Kate Mendenhall 1:07:06
We have a new director at the National Organic Program. We know that consumers want soil-based products. We know that farmers want soil-based organic, so we’ll continue to advocate for that. We’re operating in a country that has a culture of high capitalism and industrial models, and it doesn’t always protect small businesses. Making sure that values are at the heart of organic is our responsibility as participants.

Linley Dixon 1:07:42
Do you feel like that last Organic Poultry & Livestock Standards rule will get rid of the two-story chicken houses that we were seeing? Have we seen the decertification of Herbruck’s or some of those facilities yet?

Kate Mendenhall 1:07:57
I think the language to do so is there. We need to have enough NOP staff and enforcement power in order for them to ensure that the rule is enforced. That’s going to be the crux. If we don’t have enough people working in the program, and we don’t continue to broaden our education of other USDA agencies and folks on the ground about what the organic regulations are, and what needs to be reviewed and enforced, it’s going to be hard to enforce the rules.

Kate Mendenhall 1:07:59
These are rules that farmers need to be successful. So, we need a strong National Organic Program in order to be able to do so.

Linley Dixon 1:08:35
Do you think that there’s a role for the eaters in all of this? Where’s the incentive for the USDA to actually enforce it? I remember that Debbie Stabenow was in Michigan, and Herbruck’s is in her state, and she was very much against this rule. There’s a direct economic correlation there.

Linley Dixon 1:08:56
What is the consumer’s role in terms of getting some awareness that this has to happen? Where is that pressure point for everybody to be more involved? Because we seem to be losing in terms of the pressure points. There’s a much bigger microphone for a lot of those entities to reach the USDA.

Kate Mendenhall 1:09:17
Consumers have always been important in pushing for high organic integrity. Farmers can’t do it alone. Not every state is an agricultural state, and many states have large numbers of organic consumers. We need everyone working together with a similar message, advocating for what we need for organic farmers to be successful. Consumers have stopped a lot of really bad ideas the USDA has had about organic.

Linley Dixon 1:09:46
That’s true. That victory at the beginning is a great example. Do we have some other big wins like that? The big three?

Kate Mendenhall 1:09:57
What are the big three in your mind?

Linley Dixon 1:09:59
At the very beginning, I think the USDA, with the regulations in 2000, said that they wanted to include radiation, GMOs, and possibly one other thing that came from the top down. It might have been sewage sludge. The organic community completely caught fire and responded, saying, “No way. These are not organic.” Because of the amount of response, those proposals were withdrawn. They’re not part of organic anymore.

Kate Mendenhall 1:10:34
I know that there have been examples since I’ve been in the policy realm, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. But consumers have consistently been an outreach point for farmer issues. When we’re bringing farmer issues that have a broader impact, where we know consumer voices will be helpful, we ask all of our farmers to talk to their consumers and get them to weigh in as well.

Kate Mendenhall 1:10:58
We know that those consumer comments have an impact. I know when consumers show up at the National Organic Standards Board to testify, it makes a big impact on the National Organic Standards. We don’t often get consumer participation in that arena. We probably need more of it, especially when it’s supporting what farmers need, because farmers are busy farming.

Kate Mendenhall 1:11:24
That’s part of why the Organic Farmers Association is here – so we can tell farmers when something has come up and we really need their voice to be amplified. But consumers aren’t on the same schedule. They can respond when farmers are busy in the fields, and we really need to be working together to amplify this values-based system that we all believe in and that we want to keep growing – to be stronger, definitely not weakened, and progressing so that the markets expand, our domestic markets expand, and we can continue to grow organic production here at home.

Linley Dixon 1:12:00
That was one of the big lessons from Europe that I’ve recently learned: they put these organic policies in place. Something like TOPP would help to make it either part of the Farm Bill or supported by the USDA, because you would have a much larger movement. You would have the Sierra Club and environmental groups – things like that – supporting it as well.

Linley Dixon 1:12:21
I see this as an all-hands-on-deck situation because organic farming, even if you’re not consuming it, benefits everybody. There’s a lack of toxins in your environment, and the carbon sequestration in the farming. There are so many things that benefit us all. Kate, is there anything I didn’t get a chance to discuss with you that means a lot to you?

Kate Mendenhall 1:12:44
For me, working at the Organic Farmers Association to help organic farmers be successful, to amplify their voices in D.C., and to bring farmers together to learn that even though they are operating in very different markets and very different regional structures and climates, organic farmers are, for the most part, farming for the same reasons, and that we share so much more than we have differences.

Kate Mendenhall 1:13:09
It is such a joy for me to be in this role and help organic farmers bring their voices forward, to be heard, to create relationships with their representatives. I just encourage all certified organic farmers to get involved. We want to hear your voices.

Kate Mendenhall 1:13:25
We want to connect you with your representatives and your senators and make sure that they hear your voice and that they know what you need to be successful so that we can continue to push policy towards more supportive policies for organic farmers. It’s something I believe in to my core, and we just need more organic in this country.

Kate Mendenhall 1:13:45
Thanks so much for the opportunity to have me on the show, Linley. I believe in what the Real Organic Project is doing. I think that there’s so much great synergy between what we’re striving for and what you’re striving for as well.

Linley Dixon 1:13:58
Absolutely. Thank you, Kate.

Kate Mendenhall 1:14:00
Yeah. Thanks, Linley.