Spirit in Action

Cornucopia Institute: Organic Foods Watchdog

Mark Kastel is co-founder and senior farm policy analyst for The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-originated organization serving as a watchdog for "good food" - organics, family farms, environmental and economic justice issues, all around food. With careful research and attention to the oft-missing integrity of our food system, Cornucopia helps plug the holes in our national organic food standards.

Broadcast on:: 09 Feb 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sync deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Many of you know the word cornucopia, but fewer of you probably know the tiny town of Cornucopia, Wisconsin Or the organization birthed in Wisconsin called the Cornucopia Institute Cornucopia is a symbol of abundance, a perfect connection to an organization Dedicated to preserving the natural riches of organic food and producers Real food, grown by real people, often family farms, with real integrity Co-founded by our guest, Mark Castell, along with another fine force for food integrity, Will Fantle The Cornucopia Institute is now 7,000 members strong working across the USA As a watchdog on the quality of the most basic of human needs are food Mark Castell of the Cornucopia Institute joins us by phone from rural southwest Wisconsin Mark, I'm very happy to have you here today for spirit in action Thank you, Mark Cornucopia Institute has been functioning how long now? We are about to have our ninth birthday and enter into our tenth year So relatively young in comparison to some other public interest groups that work in food and farming But we started because there was a bit of a gap in the oversight of the organic industry And we've never wanted for an abundance of work It seems to me that you have at least a dual thrust Organics clearly are at the heart of what you're doing But the family farm is also important Could you explain the overview of what Cornucopia is about? Sure, we are a farm policy research group Our overall goal is to promote the ecological wisdom that's inherent in the organic farming movement It also is one of the best social and economic justice vehicles to come along in a number of decades As we've seen this rapacious, capitalistic structure squeeze out family farmers And we've simultaneously seen massive escalation in the use of toxic agrochemicals That are now polluting our surface and groundwater, our drinking water, pollutes the air and soil in rural America It even pollutes the rainwater in rural America So we've seen this massive shift in the predominant paradigm of food production in this country Along with the shift to a different kind of production model for farming And I should remind your listeners that virtually all farmers in the United States Were family farmers and organic farmers prior to World War II So we've seen that shift in farm production We've seen the shift to highly processed food And then we've seen this newer trend and I'll use the short hair and organics But there are other communications vehicles And what we might refer to globally is the good food movement So there's local food, people connecting in their own food shed And keeping their dollars local and getting truly fresh food There's the CSA movement, community sponsored agriculture Where consumers contract directly with farmers And they actually absorb some of the risk, they invest in the farm on a seasonal basis And then receive a box of fresh food throughout the growing season So all these wrapped up, but I'll use the organics as a shorthand Because most of the agricultural practitioners involved in these Value added, higher quality, handcrafted production are using organics Whether it's founded a local member owned food co-op Or the farmers market or your CSA box or online Most of it's organic So we've seen this trend of citizens in this country That really don't trust the FDA and the USDA to bless our food anymore We just see all these food safety scares In terms of very virulent strains and things like E. coli We see the chemicals, residues in our food They tell us there's no cause for alarm, but not all of us believe that And we see genetic engineering which has been grossly oversold economically for farmers And has received virtually no long-term testing in terms of human health Either on lab animals or humans themselves, we just don't test for it So folks are opting out, they're voting in the marketplace For a different kind of food production and they're winning And now we're seeing even these terms that we communicate with Because there's economic value to them being co-opted And that might be the good segue to talk about the spiritual connection to our food Because for a lot of these consumers that are motivated To be more conscious in terms of their food selection There is a spiritual component They're really reconnecting with the earth as the most intimate thing we do Really in our commercial lives at least is by food When we were talking before we started recording You mentioned your co-director and senior farm policy analyst For the current copy institute and your almost chief theologian So this spirituality of food has a special place for you? It does very much personally, I would suggest is an integral part of this movement The reason I might be almost the number one theologian is Charlotte Bally Our director of farm and food policy who's located works out of the Boston area She has advanced degrees from Tufts in terms of food science and food policy But she has an advanced degree from Harvard in theology with an emphasis on environmental ethics So that's a really good fit for cornucopia And I'll defer to her for the official doctrine on the connection between food and spirituality So I'll just give you my personal take on this if I may mark I like to say we know why people first come to organics And it's selfish and there's nothing wrong with that It's really based on instinct and old brain chemistry After all, we've gone to war with different peoples over food During most of our species history We've spent most of our waking day gathering, cooking, preserving Gathering the firewood in the water to prepare our meals And if we weren't doing that we're usually worried about food And where our next food would come from and if we could preserve the food without spoiling Food was our lives That's kind of the joke I give people who come into my home and food is my life I do it professionally, but when I'm not on duty I'm worrying about food And I'm dealing with it and there's a certain joy to being more conscious And although the initial motivations are selfish And they're instinctual, especially when there are children involved They want the very best food, the very best nutrition, the safest possible food So even when we were driven by those instinctual cues The reason in our focus group work at cornucopia That we've determined there's such little price resistance To the premiums people are paying for organics It's growing rapidly, even in general when we've had bad economic times It's continued to grow and that's because people, they don't just feel they're being selfish They're certainly cognizant of that, but they think they're simultaneously doing something good for society So they think that built right into that price is economic justice for the families that produce our food They think they are supporting a different kind of environmental ethic And a different kind of animal husbandry model, a more humane model So there's a lot of values built into that organic label and that higher price One of the problems we're seeing now is that as corporate agribusiness is taken over so much of the organic market Consumers are feeling betrayed, so is it really organic milk if it comes from a 7,000 cow dairy Or 9,000 cow it's grown to in Texas in the desert and then chipping milk all over the country That doesn't sound like it's organic If the people involved are hardworking and sadly exploited immigrants living in trailers out in the desert heat That doesn't sound like supporting family farmers If that milk is shipped from Texas across the country and then undercuts family farmers There's no economic justice there And how about imports from China or Caracostan undercutting our family farmers? We have Chinese soybeans coming in and a number of other products We don't even trust the Chinese for ingredients in our dog and cat food any longer Let alone what we're feeding to our children So cornucopia has become an industry watchdog to make sure that the values that represent the organic label Are not sold out for a quick buck and corporate profits So when you're talking about the whole that you're filling, that you're plugging in organic standards You're talking about this wider selection of items I mean it may be organic technically in some way But are the standards that have been promulgated by FDA for organic? Are they widely exploited? Are they always looking for the loophole? Sadly, I think yes, we've really evolved into two organic labels And I want to just mildly correct you, it's the USDA that oversees organics The FDA oversees a lot of our food safety and food production But in terms of farming, and that's where the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 passed by Congress really falls under So we really have seen this now bifurcated organic system When I first got involved in the commercial organic sector in the 1980s and it was small It was really dominated by farmers and either direct marketing Or farmers direct to food co-ops and independently owned natural food stores They were really the pioneers in making the connections There was no such thing as Whole Foods You certainly couldn't walk into a safe way and find anything organic So it was really a loving collaboration between farmers and consumers Who were willing to pay them a fair price And then there was a smattering of entrepreneurs that basically ran small companies But they were one of us, they came out of, we didn't even call the organic industry that We called it the organic community And since then we've had companies like Dean Foods, the largest milk bottler in the country By Horizon Organic and Silk, General Mills, you'll never see the name Dean Foods on Horizon or Silk Or General Mills on Cascadian farms, or New Yorkland tomato products You'll see, in their case small planet foods, for Dean Foods you'll see White Wave So if I may, they're hiding behind a facade And our co-director Will Phantom, he likes to use the term "They know what we're hungry for" You know, we're not just buying that food, we're buying the story behind the food And they don't want General Mills mucking up that story That makes it complicated, so small planet food just sounds a whole heck of a lot better So we now have this dual system, do I trust organics? Well, it's still the best, even with its warts The best food labeling, food oversight system, it's the gold standard There really isn't anything else, and that's why it's worth fighting for But there are two levels here now The one path organics have gone down Is the one it's always been, the path that it started on And that's, if you're meeting an organic farmer at your farmer's market And shaking his or her hand and looking into his or her eyes You've got a really intimate contract and contact with that farmer Most of them will say, if you're asking questions about their production Hey, come on out and see how our chickens live Or see how we're doing soil fertility for vegetable production You know, this is where, if you have a CSA boxer, you're showing up at the farmer's market Your vegetables were probably harvested 10 hours ago Not 10 days ago in California on an industrial scale farm Even though they were labeled organic So that's a really trustworthy level, the direct marketing level And then there are some really wonderful, family-owned, usually independent businesses That have never lost their vision in what's organic about And if I could just throw a couple of them out Nature's path is the largest organic cereal manufacturer and granola manufacturer And I think they do things like bars and they're diversifying a little bit But it's still owned by the family that founded them They're constantly getting contacts from venture capitalists And other industrials wanting to buy them out, they're still independent They either grow some of their own or contract directly with farmers There's no brokers, they're not just depending on a piece of paper To know that the oats that they're buying or the wheat that they're buying is really organic That's old world organics And another company that's even more diversified is Eden Foods based in Michigan And they do everything from canned beans to soy milk to all kinds of grocery items Before I made this radical shift to organic agriculture, I was a corporate agribusiness executive I started my career with international harvester, FMC, and J.I. case Three giant machinery manufacturers And then I got sick from pesticide poisoning, so I had this rude awakening But before I made that shift, the last job I had in the farm implement industry Was I owned a dealership of my own for case an international harvester in southeast Michigan Some of my farming customers at the time were the very first, this is the early 1980s The very first farmers in the United States to grow vintants, food-grade soybeans for tofu and soy milk Prior to that, believe it or not, we were input, even though we can perfectly grow soybeans All the soybeans or soy products were being imported from Japan That's not very organic to burn up all that diesel fuel, getting it here And those same farmers who were the first ones growing that were my customers buying tractors from me Were selling their soybeans to Eden Foods And talking to their CEO, Michael Potter, some of those same families, now it's the next generation Are still growing under contract from Eden He can sit down the CEO of Eden Foods at the dining room table, the kitchen table With these farm families and sign the contracts and look them all in the eye Again, that's really old world Most of the other soybeans, and for that matter, in my pantry, last night, I had some Eden Foods or Banzo beans in an Indian dish Most of the black beans and dried beans in this country come from China with the organic label on there So Eden Foods is a little radical, you know, their beans are just a little bit more expensive But they come either from Michigan or southern Ontario, pretty close to their plant in Michigan I think some varieties might come from the Dakotas, but they're all grown in North America By family farmers here that, quite frankly, Mark Castell just trusts those farmers And what's coming from China? I don't know, because there's a history of endemic commercial fraud in China Intellectual property and name brand property In their domestic press, there's been documented problems with organics We don't really think the USDA is doing a top-notch job to oversee this So we think people should look for products that are made in the USA and get as close to the farmers as they can That farmers market is a great venue for that I want to retrace a few of the threads that you encountered while you were speaking there One of them was your personal conversion I think it involved the pesticide poisoning that you got How key was that for you in changing your worldview and how widespread of an issue is it? Is this something that really happens widely? Because I certainly haven't heard about it I heard people having issues with E. coli eating some food or tofu or sprouts or something But pesticide poisoning? I don't know My case was occupational exposure Sadly, farmers have some highest cancer rates depending on type of cancer in our society And really high rates of other endemic problems, chronic health disease I can say it's very common for farmers, you know, that's the evidence, their health impacts And I can tell you, the I-interview farmers It's very common, I'll give you two examples Ray Hoss, who was one of the founders of the Organic Valley Co-op, which is mostly dairy products He was one of the first seven dairy farmers Ray was a fairly mild-mannered individual and his farm was gorgeous He had no weeds, he was a really talented practitioner And he was organic before there was any premium market And when I asked him why he switched to organics He said that I believe one of his family members got sick from pesticide exposure And he came in that day at lunch and pounded his fist on the table and told his wife God damn it, we're going to stop farming with chemicals, we're just going to stop farming And this is a man who was born into farming, he wasn't going to quit He ended up educating himself and becoming a master Another story I can recall is someone who was very dear to me, Bill Welch, who was a pioneering organic livestock producer And when he died, he held an emeritus position on cornucopia's board of directors Bill was on the first National Organic Standards Board after Congress entrusted the USDA to oversee organics Bill's story was a little bit different His cattle got sick and started dying and his entire herd went into crisis And they could not figure out what was going on and it was emotionally devastating It ends up that he had fed the cattle some hay that was in a storage barn That was sitting on top of an empty bag that came with an insecticide And so it was a minute trace dusting of this material that got on the feed for this cattle No one cow really ingested very much of it And when Bill studied what the chemical compound was, he found out that it was one of the poisons that he studied In biological warfare school during the Korean War And he swore he would never ever have that on his farm again So Bill was someone, again, who educated himself when there wasn't much of an infrastructure Now we have a lot of research and support groups for organics, not as much as we deserve So my story in getting sick is not too unique I was very lucky to have been seen and treated by, at the time, the country's preeminent environmental allergist This was an MD who was branded a quack in the 50s When he first suggested that environmental factors could be deleterious to health By the time I saw him when he was 80, he's now passed away, his name was Theoring Randolph By the time I saw him, he's footnoted in all the medical literature as being the expert He had suggested that in addition to being on a drug therapy because I had a fungal overgrowth And radically changing my diet in terms of getting rid of the allergens that were in my diet He said you should eat all organic food because the quality of our food and water Are really the only control we have over the stressors on our immune system And I began to eat entirely organic food and garden organically, ended up farming organically It became really philosophically impossible to sell 400 horsepower tractors and chemical sprayers To monocrop producers when I wouldn't eat their food And, you know, years before this, and I still believe that farming is a very high calling It's stewarding the earth and God's creation What more important occupation to the well-being of our society than farming and growing our food So I still have personally great reverence for and respect for farmers But our entire production systems going down these two paths, farmers have become victims themselves So I really was excited and continued to be excited about being on the path that respects the environmental sovereignty of our planet And respects the health and well-being of the people eating the food It's an important job for all of us and our capitalistic market has turned food into just another widget And this growth in organics is a reversal in the way many people view food You're listening to Spirit in Action, I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet This is a Northern Spirit Radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org You can go there, find the stations where we're broadcast, you can listen to and download our seven and a half years Of history, of talking to people who are changing the world, making it a better place You can find links to them, like to the Cornucopia Institute That's Cornucopia, you can follow the link from northernspiritradio.org to find them You can also find a place to leave comments, and we'd love to hear from you We'd like to have two-way dialogues, so please speak to us, recommend guests Let us know what's helpful, what's not, and we'll try to improve our programming to meet your needs There's also a place there to leave contributions, you can even mail them in or online, you can use PayPal Follow the donate button to do that, and also I'd like to suggest that you remember to donate to your local community radio station They're filling an invaluable niche in our communications and information in this world Also doing that is Mark Castell, he's of the Cornucopia Institute, on the web at cornucopia.org Cornucopia is C-O-R-N-U-C-O-P-I-A, or again follow the link from northernspiritradio.org Mark Castell is co-director, he's co-founder, and he's senior farm policy analyst for the Cornucopia Institute Now you've just been talking, Mark, about farmers and the position, the predicament I think that they find themselves in There's a whole history to this, when you mentioned the poisons that are found in insecticides and fertilizers It's significant to note that part of this was shifting wartime production, nitrates and so on, into fertilizers And so it was really, we had a spare war product that we needed to turn into something valuable I made it into stuff that we put on our crop lines Why has this, what we think now is normal or commercial agriculture Why is that such a powerful movement? Is it not? Because that's the green revolution and that's the way we feed more people Was it a useful transition or is it not? Or is it on the whole? Could we have done just as well if we'd stayed organic all along? Well, that's a good question. We don't know because that where all the research and development money went into Was to products that you can patent and you can make lots of money if you're in the petrochemical business creating fertilizers You can make lots of money if you were in the chemical warfare business If you could take some of these neurotoxins and other compounds And instead of killing people on the battlefield use smaller quantities and use them to kill little critters out in our farm fields And of course the sad part is that we don't just kill what we refer to as target species We really decimate the biology, the biodiversity of wide swaths of our planet and nation by killing all kinds of species Target and our target species and then of course unfortunately it gets in the water and eventually kills us too It just happens a little bit slower in most cases So I should add a little sidebar here that one of the things I like to say and I know a lot of people feel good about this Is you know if we don't accomplish anything more by switching it to an organic diet Forget about the health impacts on ourselves forget about the impacts on the environment We're really protecting the people who grow our food as I've said farmers and farm workers So generally the migrant laborers and usually they're from Mexico or Central America They and their families their children who very typically live in contiguous spaces to the farm fields Had these high levels of cancers of chronic diseases like asthma and children So if we don't accomplish anything more we're saying that it's worth protecting these people who grow our food So there are all kinds of ancillary benefits to organics other than when people first say I don't want pesticide residues in my food I don't want antibiotic residues or synthetic hormones or genetic engineering You know that might be what drives them to start with but I think they find more meeting in their food They learn more the more they become interested in organics The more they learn about their food production and the more they feel comfortable and spiritually renewed by having that level of consciousness Let's follow a couple of the other threads of the things you were talking about We just addressed what was called the green revolution and how ironic of a name is that if there's something that's not green It's the way that we commercially have learned to produce our food on our farms I'll tell you what's the green and that's the green backs that went into the pockets of corporate executives and investors By basically turning in food production into a proprietary commercial enterprise So we've had a tremendous consolidation just a few companies control Basically all the beef processing in this country If you look at any commodity, Dean Foods controls a vast disproportionate percentage of organic and conventional milk production in this country So whenever we have in the commercial sector just a few entities controlling the production everyone loses And the producers, the farmers, the farm workers, the consumer, we lose economically We lose in terms of I would testify the quality and safety of our food But somebody's getting rich, there's a green here Mark I was kind of surprised when you were listing off the various food companies that I guess you'd say were good They are more local, are not owned by the mega-giant agribusiness folks One of them you did not mention was Organic Valley They owned by some of the higher up I guess not green producers Or are they still a co-op that's really dealing with local family farmers? It's a more nuanced answer, it's a little bit of a mixed bag We have a lot of respect for Organic Valley It's a farmer owned co-op that again started with seven dairy farmers and a couple dozen vegetable farmers And I in fact was an Organic Valley farmer remember at one point It's now grown to there's about 1700 farmers in all over the country And they're positioned to do a billion dollars worth of business possibly as soon as next year And so it's mostly good, it's a mostly really good co-op And they get almost all their products from family scale farmers But although I have quite a bit of personal affection for the co-op I have to do my job as a watchdog in cornucopia I have to fulfill their mission to oversee them like everyone else And they've made a few mistakes along the way They're still making a few mistakes And we're trying to pressure them to maintain the integrity of their label We have a secret weapon in that regard Unlike Dean Foods whose board of directors has zero farmers on their board And they all make in excess of I think $250,000 a year The board at Organic Valley is all farmers And when they fall off the wagon and done something that their customers don't know about And think might not be in accordance to the spirit of the organic regulations Not maybe even the letter of the law Our secret weapon is we can go to the farmers and they really care And the worst problems we've uncovered over there They have really been upset by them And they've called their management to task and corrected the problem So it's a shame that we've had to get that far But that's the strength of Organic Valley When others criticize Organic Valley I like to defend them by quoting Winston Churchill who once said Democracy is the worst possible form of government excepting all the rest And so Organic Valley isn't perfect but it's certainly a pretty darn good outfit And worth saving for the farmers and the consumers who are stakeholders there And we're in that camp We think it's a good outfit that's worth making sure It doesn't betray the values that that co-op was founded upon One of the things about Organic Valley that I note Is that I think it originated here in Wisconsin And cornucopia originates again from Wisconsin Even though you spread out across the country both of them have Is there something special brewing here, I guess that's a pun in itself Is there something special brewing in Wisconsin with respect to organics? I think there probably is I think it's the second or third largest number of organic farms in the country We certainly have the largest number of organic dairy farms and livestock farms and egg farms I think it's a combination of factors One is that the topography here in parts of Wisconsin Really is not conducive for large industrial scale agriculture So we retained our small farms much longer than some other states did And these were small, kind of hard-scrabble farms, hard-working people Most organic farmers in this country Were not kind of hippie back to the land folks, although they are out there Organics is really a big tent, I like to look at the membership at cornucopia Which is now around 7,000 and it's thought to have more organic farmers And any other group in the country is members And we have those barefoot hippies farming with horses But we also have a lot of Amish families farming with horses As cornucopia members and other plain sect like Mennonite folks And lots of conservative rural Christians If you drove by their farms In most cases you couldn't really tell in Wisconsin Whether it was an organic farm or a conventional farm They look very similar The cows get to actually go outside and graze on organic farms So that's one telltale sign if it's a dairy outfit So I think it was a combination of we had farm families That were really very close to being organic to start with many of them And scaled properly and in the right mindset and economically We're looking for a really good alternative And the other part is that in many parts of Wisconsin in the upper Midwest These areas were settled by European and Scandinavian immigrants And there was a history of a more socialistic economic structure Of doing things together And so the Scandinavians, the Swedes, the regions, the Finns They came to Wisconsin and Minnesota, the Dakotas And they formed cooperatives, they formed businesses that they own together And I'm really lucky that where I live in Wisconsin My phone company is a cooperative owned by us, the user members My electric company is a cooperative I buy my food at one of two natural food co-ops that are member owned My LP gas for heating comes from the farm supply co-op My bank is a cooperative credit union So these are things we do together We're involved in capitalism, we're involved in commerce But we're sharing risk and we share reward And so I think that kind of economic perspective of doing things together Was really conducive as a launching pad for organics also Because we couldn't depend on the land grant universities And the cooperative extension service for knowledge We needed to teach ourselves We needed to cooperate among ourselves as a farmer to farmer system And that's still true The largest organic farming conference in the country Sponsored by Moses in La Crosse, Wisconsin It's coming up here at the end of February It takes space in February each year So it's not a surprise that the largest conference of that type In the country is right on the Mississippi River Pretty close to where Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin all meet You know, it was funny Mark, when you mentioned Electric and telephone co-op, all those things I live a few hours away from you up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin You're down in the southwest corner of the state I have all of those same things Yeah, it's true, it's kind of omnipresent here Perhaps in the upper Midwest And I think it's a spiritual outlook, too And one of the things I wanted to pursue as a thread There is, I think, a perception in mainstream society That you can either be spiritual or you can be scientific And that conventional using pesticides, all that kind of thing That kind of agriculture is scientific Because they're controlling the number of bushels that they produce per acre And they've quantified all these things and so it's that scientific Versus maybe a more holistic or spiritual outlook Which is probably what people think about organics as being Where the quality of the process and the quality of the experience Of eating the food, of producing it matters Do you find that you have to address that difference in perception From the public's point of view? Well, that's an interesting question First of all, I take issue a little bit in terms of the scientific basis for conventional agriculture I think a lot of it is a commercial basis And a lot of these materials that are sold are based on enriching the companies There's not a lot of evidence that genetic engineering is an example Really economically benefits farmers, in some cases it produces lower yields But it's jacked up the price of seed and herbicides and fertilizers Without a lot of reward to the individuals or certainly to society The other thing is, you know, there's the old thing that, I can't remember exactly how it goes Man plans and God executes And there's also saying that mother nature bats last And so a lot of these innovations that, in the short term, in a little blip in terms of evolution Look like they're productive, really aren't The genetically engineered cultivars that are most of our corn and soybeans in this country Are sold by Monsanto's technology, genetic engineering, to resist glycophate The active ingredient in Roundup, they're the largest herbicide manufacturer in Monsanto And so for a few years that worked great, but now we're seeing resistance in the weeds Just like organisms create resistance to antibiotic usage if it's overdone Now we see weeds that the chemicals won't kill, so we're having higher applications of chemicals Or a toxic cocktail of different herbicides to kill the weeds Some of the insects are becoming resistant to the genetic engineered traits Or the chemicals that are being used, so this type of technology has a very short shelf life That, in terms of the evolutionary process on this planet, this is a little blip And we're now finding that, and many conditions around the world, especially in developing countries That organic production, done right, is even more productive than some of the high technology agriculture So we're getting a different kind of reality kicking in Maybe I can go off on a little tangent with you here, Mark, because you talked about the consumer's perspective In terms of spirituality, I can go farther than that and say that In every religious vernacular, we used to say grace before we ate, and we meant it We were thankful for our food It's just a few generations in this species that at least in rich countries That we've been relatively food secure, that's not true of everybody that we share this planet with Prior to that, if it didn't rain at the right time, if you didn't get due at the right time Your children literally starved to death So when we said grace before and after meals in many cases, we really meant it And that's where I think this spiritual component is coming back for so many families That they're finding this intimate relationship with the earth and God's creation through their food production Many people are going back to home gardening and canning Being a member of a CSA and a food co-op where these are communities around food It's just this wonderful experiential opportunity for children I travel all over the country speaking and many times I'm at a conference And one of our local members will invite me over for a meal I love this phrase, I've heard it more than once, they'll serve a wonderful meal I might be in downtown Seattle, and they say all these vegetables came from "our farm" And what they're saying is they're a member of a CSA They actually look at that as being their farm, they have this emotional investment in it And it's just I think a wonderful trend that people are doing more prayers Being more conscious, there are people who are vegetarians and vegans They are obviously very conscious of the impact of livestock agriculture on our psyche and on the animals But I think there's a growing trend of conscious omnivores who are saying That I will not, with my patronage, support these torturous conditions and disrespectful conditions That animals that are raised as our food have to endure, I just am going to opt out And there's a lot of people who are really, really interested in not only the quality of meat and milk, dairy products And eggs for their nutrition and their safety impacts on their family But also how are those animals cared for? And so all of this added awareness is something that is really pleasing to me I've seen this industry grow from just a little naysing, a bunch of farmers Directly selling food to today, organics is over 30 billion dollar industry And it's because people care for a great measure I find it real interesting that you mentioned omnivores who are eating, I guess healthy meat Or meat that you consider the entire trajectory I think part of the global tide that has helped support this move towards organic foods Has been some thinking, like the thinking in Michael Pollan's omnivores dilemma And also back further than that, Wendell Berry is a sense of place The idea that we actually connect to our food and to the place it comes from and the entire process In my lexicon, that is a spiritual question If all we care about is how many pounds of it, then we've lost perhaps spirituality in that So are there other major, I guess, cultural tides that have been adding to this movement That the cornucopia institute and you, Mark Castell, as part of the co-directors for that institute That have helped raise up the visibility of the work that you're doing? Well, I think, you know, we've talked about the spiritual heart connection here Certainly, if you consider yourself an environmentalist And that's Wendell Berry as a theologian, if we want to call him that It's certainly called attention to this relationship between how we eat and how we steward this planet And so I think there's a lot of drivers that are bringing people to the good food movement And health is certainly, as I was saying, the key driver, but not the only driver So protecting the earth, we have a self-interest We're one of the creatures that walk upon it, and if we want to protect ourselves And our children and fouling generations, we cannot keep continuing to soil our bed with these toxins And so I really say at cornucopia, we operate at a busy intersection It's where health intersects with humane animal health Where fairness and economic justice were our food system intersects and protecting the environment So it's a busy, busy intersection, and a lot of people get it A lot of people come to organics and the good food movement for different reasons But we're all meeting at the same place And the happy part is it's just growing exponentially The number of farmers markets around the country, the number of CSA's The overall gross volume and organic sales These are booming, new food co-ops are forming around the country As the premier portal for how to find organic food in your community It's a very positive outcome, and that's why it's worse We view this as an industry watchdog, it's worth protecting Because unfortunately, as we grow, we're dangling these economic carrots in front of people That are only interested in the economic rewards We think organics should be scaled neutral, we welcome investor owned corporations But they have to play by the same rules Well, it's good that you're doing that work Can we address some of the specifics of what cornucopia does The cornucopia institute, again on the web at cornucopia.org You can follow the link from northernspiritradio.org What about the scorecards, the reports, your membership? Could you flesh out a little bit about what cornucopia is in reality? Well, we're a public interest charity, we're tax exempt So we're chartered by the IRS to do research and educational work And we've not always been successful in the political arena But we're very active there The National Organic Standards Board created by Congress to oversee the organic regulations And advise the USDA's secretary, as an example, nothing that synthetic can ever be used in organics Unless they bless it first and make sure that it's not a threat to the environment, not a threat to human health As an example, you know, the most benign examples We can't have an organic cupcake without baking powder And there's no organic version of baking powder But I don't know that there's any research that suggests it's a threat to human health So we're at those meetings twice a year, but this system has been undermined And corrupted by economic powers in Washington and partisan politics It was a real sellout during the Bush years They actually proactively tried to monkey wrench this system Many of us were more optimistic when Mr. Obama was elected And now are quite disillusioned by the fact that the same kind of corrupt Washington power politics Are being played out in the stewardship of the organic program At the USDA, President Obama hired a former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack The biotechnology industry governor of the year to run the USDA And it has been more balanced There's been more support and funding for farmers markets And some nutrition programs and efforts to get better food in our schools And that's really good and better budgets at the national organic program But they've done things like appointed corporate chills to help oversee organic regulations And so we're kind of going backwards in some enforcement areas And we're really just about ready to take them to court on some of these issues Where they think they're actually violating the law So we actively work in the political arena and get our hands a little dirty there But we think that there's a higher power in this country than the USDA when it comes to overseeing organics And that's the organic consumer, our customers out there in the farming community They really care, they have a passion for this So when we find that there are improprieties in a given sector of organics We want to empower consumers and wholesale buyers So they can make good discerning purchasing decisions So you mentioned our scorecard, so we started with a scorecard for organic dairy Which brands come from family scale farmers whose cows might have names, not numbers Which brands come from entirely or partially from giant "factory farms" Industrial scale agriculture where the cows might leave very short lives before they're slaughtered for hamburger Just like conventional dairy is pushed for very high production, they get sick, they can't reproduce anymore That's not what we think we're paying our premiums for And so that scorecard there's a narrative report for anyone who wants to dig deeper on knowing about their organic dairy products And then there's a brand scorecard with well over 100 brands of milk and cheese and ice cream And really helping us guide us in the supermarket and the co-op And that was so popular, we now replicated that rating all the organic egg brands in the country For our vegan and vegetarian members there's scorecards for organic soy products So tofu and soy milk and some of the meat analogs So we've really dug deep to try to say that we want the very best in organics And we'll all team up together to create marketplace pressure To reward the true heroes in this industry and send a really powerful message to the bad actors That if you want our loyalty and our patronage that you have to abide by the values that this industry was founded upon And also on the Karnacopia.org website you have a menu option for reports Who prepares these? Who are you working with? What kind of expertise do they bring to it? I noticed by the way you have a menu option for almonds. How did almonds get their own menu option? Sure, well first these are all produced in-house We have outside reviewers experts and scientists that take a look at our material We have a pretty diverse background and range of talents here My backgrounds in agricultural policy and ag economics We have staff in our policy area that has academic advanced degrees and doctorates And food science, food policy, soil science, vegetable production And when we don't have the in-house talent we try to collaborate with others So an interesting question about almonds is We discovered a rather stealthy federal regulation that went into effect a few years ago We acquired all "raw almonds" to be "pasturized" What does that mean? Well there were a couple salmonella problems with almonds with raw almonds They could only trace one back. There was a company called I think it's Paramount Farms They had 9,000 acres and it was the largest nut, almond and pistachio grower in the world They might not be able to control the pathogens on their nuts The same way somebody with 50 or 100 acres doing it on a handcrafted organic basis And so because they can't control it, they've mandated now the USDA that all "raw almonds" be either heated with steam and treated Or treated with a chemical fumigant called propylene oxide That's a chemical band in Canada and many other countries And classified as, I believe, a possible carcinogen You know, we don't want that on our food So we kind of ran the alarm bell on this and we've actually sued the USDA The USDA doesn't really have the regulatory authority over food safety That's the FDA And so they made this rule through something called the almond board of California ABC Which is a research and promotion board Those are the people trying to sell you almonds They don't really have the legal authority to regulate food safety And so we're still in court This is really, really an important issue for many cornucopia members who are vegan So about the vast majority of our membership are organic farmers At least 30% last time we checked what we call our urban allies And some of these people don't eat meat and one of their prime protein sources is almonds They make their own almond milk, they make almond flowers And they don't want propylene oxide And they want the beneficial aspects of eating raw food that hasn't been heated and be natured And so this is something really near and dear to them But it's a symptom of industry manipulating our food to make it convenient to be produced on an industrial scale It's clear to me, Mark, that you have a spiritual connection both to food and to what you're doing Does this come out of a religious history or maybe a reaction to a religious background that you have? What is your background? I don't think it comes out of a religious background I don't see a lot of spiritual connection with food today Directly coming out of religious teachings and religious institutions And I certainly didn't have that strong guidance in my own home I think people are finding that and reconnecting And then connecting using that as a vehicle to connect to their various religious pathways So I sadly don't see that I've seen some evidence in Catholic and Jewish roots and teachings And some institutions, but none of them are mainstream Catholic or mainstream Judaism They're kind of the upstarts trying to look deeper and find more meaning in their own spiritual lives Well, it's a good thing we've got the Kornikopia Institute and you, Mark Castell Keeping your ears open, your eyes open For the surreptitious ways in which organics are compromised in this country In their deep essence and even sometimes as you just mentioned with almonds On a very obvious scientific level The standards are getting compromised and we need a watchdog like the Kornikopia Institute out there watching for us I'm amazed at the depth and breadth of the work that the Kornikopia Institute is doing I do hope people will check out your website, kornikopia.org And I want to thank you so much, Mark Castell, for joining me here today for Spirit in Action It's been a pleasure, I've enjoyed hearing your show on my own local public community radio station WDRT in Verocua, Wisconsin So I send a shout out to WDRT listeners, to all of the community radio stations where this is carried Or if you're listening via the internet, all of these places, good sources of information Support your local community radio station and support the Kornikopia Institute. Thanks again, Mark You bet The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing (upbeat music)