By Bill Duesing, CT NOFA Organic Advocate
CT NOFA Policy Report
Bill Duesing, CT NOFA Organic Advocate
bduesing@mac.com
Your membership in CT NOFA amplifies your voice on important
agricultural and food policy issues in Connecticut and on a regional, national
and international level. Here’s how you’ve been involved.
In Connecticut
This year our biggest push was for a Healthy Soils bill which
would support farmers who want to adopt practices to build carbon-rich organic
matter levels in soil. These practices, such as using no till methods, cover
crops and compost, provide multiple benefits by encouraging healthier soil,
plants, water, air and climate.
Because of the nature of this short legislative session, a bill
has to be introduced by a committee, in this case the Environment
Committee. Jeff and I met with the
committee chairs and co-chairs and lobbied other members, but the Committee
leadership didn’t introduce our bill.
We’ve been encouraged to bring it up again next year when there will be
fewer limitations. It often takes a
number of tries to get a bill through all the hoops to become law. At many stages a bill’s success is more in
the hands of committee or chamber leaders than those of the rank and file
members and the public. (See CT NOFA Facebook post for photo)
CT NOFA did submit testimony on several other bills supported by
partner organizations. Those included bills to ban fracturing waste in
Connecticut, the use of shredded tires as mulch in public playgrounds and automated pesticide misting systems.
(Those misting systems are typically placed along property lines to control
mosquitos The substitute bill that was
voted out of committee didn’t ban the systems outright, but would ban them
within 20 feet of a property line.)
Unfortunately none of the bills have gotten very far with so much
attention being paid to financial and other issues. The fracturing waste bill
did make it onto the Senate Calendar.
The recycled tire mulch bill made it out of the Children’s Committee,
but was killed by the Committee on Planning and Development. The amended misting systems bill made it out
of the environment but hasn’t moved since.
Leadership directs bills along various paths which can be more or less
difficult or just doesn’t let them move.
It is good that our efforts have had success in the past,
supporting the first-in-the-nation law requiring labels on foods containing
GMOs passed in 2013 (made ineffective by later Federal legislation), and a pioneering pollinator
protection bill in 2016.
You can link to our testimonies on your behalf:
On fracturing waste here.
On misting systems here.
Jeff, Tara Cook-Lipman and representatives of Friends of the
Earth met with the state’s Attorney General to encourage him to join the
investigation into the Monsanto-Bayer merger which will greatly increase
concentration in the control of seeds and other agricultural inputs. The AG
said they weren’t able to put enough energy into that matter to be worth it and
it was also late in the process.
Regional
The NOFA Interstate Policy Committee meets monthly by conference
call to discuss policy initiatives in our states and coordinate an overall NOFA
response to national issues. The policy committee uses the International
Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) principles to guide its
work. Those principles are Health,
Ecology, Fairness and Care. They are
elaborated here.
At our spring policy retreat in Deerfield Massachusetts at the
end of March, one of the big issues was responding to the efforts to address
deficiencies in the National Organic Program. Those recently confirmed deficiencies
include allowing of hydroponic produce to be certified as organic and the
withdrawal of organic animal welfare standards under the current
administration. The Real Organic Project and Rodale’s Regenerative Organic Certification both aim to improve the situation by providing an add-on to the National
Organic Certification which includes soil growing and other important features.
The integrity of organic certification has been an important
policy issue for NOFA for several decades. Although we are generally supportive
of these efforts to create add-on certifications to identify soil grown organic crops and farms which
follow appropriate labor and animal welfare standards, we didn’t want these new
certifications to disparage the many farmers who are certified and are using
good practices already, We also didn’t
want the new certifications to be a financial burden on farmers. (Preserving the Organic Cost Share Program
that reimburses farmers and processors for 75 percent of their certification
fees up to $750 is one of the current legislative issues in Washington.)
The result of our deliberations was a letter sent to the two new
certifying bodies expressing our views.
See our letter “To the Board of the Real Organic Project and to Jeff
Moyer, David Bronner and Phil Graves of Regenerative Organic Certification”
here.
One result of this letter is a dialogue with the Real Organic
Project, especially relating to carbon sequestration and their standards. Both
new certifications hope to have pilot programs in place this year and it is
likely some NOFA farmers will be involved as they are now in developing the
standards.
The European Organic Standards ban the certification of
hydroponically grown produce and now won’t allow US hydroponically grown
“organic” produce to be labeled organic.
The NOFA policy committee also works with a number of national
organizations to support and strengthen organic agriculture. We are long time members of the National
Organic Coalition, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and recently
have joined the National Family Farm Coalition and the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.
NOFA is one of the founding organizations of the Agricultural Justice Project.
International
NOFA was also a founder of IFOAM and sends a delegate to some of
their global meetings. NOFA is also
supporting the establishment of IFOAM North America. Elizabeth Henderson from NOFA NY is on the
board.
At least one person from the policy committee participates in
meetings of each of these organizations.
There is room for many more participants in this important work. Contact the CT NOFA office if you’d like to
be involved. And remember that your
membership in and donation to CT NOFA goes a long way in working for a more
organic world.
