Farm Aid President Applauds Usda's Final Organic Food Rules

Farm Aid
Thursday, 21 December 2000

Willie Nelson Encourages President-elect Bush to Ensure That Organic Standards Help, Not Hinder America's Family Farmers

Somerville, MA. - FARM AID Co-founder and President Willie Nelson applauded the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) final Organic Standards released yesterday in Washington. Nelson complimented the agency for the open process and the outcome of the 10-year long effort to develop the standards under which organic crops will be grown, marketed and distributed to US consumers.

Nelson added a word of encouragement to the incoming administration, asking President-elect Bush to allocate new federal dollars to support the standards and ensure that family farmers thrive within the growing organic food production system.

"We urge President-elect Bush and his new agriculture secretary to apply these standards in ways that preserve and expand the role family farmers play in organic agriculture," said Nelson. " Family farmers built the organic farming industry from the ground up, and the federal government has an important role to play to ensure that agribusiness corporations do not seize control of this growing sector of US agriculture," concluded Nelson.

There are more than 20,000 certified and transitional organic farmers in the U.S. today, and more than 85% of them are family farmers, according to the FARM AID-funded group Organic Farming Research Foundation based in California.

In 1990 a federal law charged the USDA to develop new standards for organic food. The first draft of the organic standards, released two years ago, provoked an unprecedented public outcry against the USDA's proposal to allow genetically-modified crops, the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer, and food irradiation to be included in the organic standards. Nelson and FARM AID Co-founders Neil Young and John Mellencamp were among the more than 275,000 citizens who criticized the USDA's recommendations and requested that these practices be eliminated from the organic standards. The USDA's final standards appear to address these concerns.

"The USDA listened to what people had to say, and we compliment them for responding accordingly," said Nelson.

FARM AID was founded in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp to raise public awareness about the plight of the American family farmer and to provide assistance to those families whose livelihood depends on agriculture. In the past fifteen years, FARM AID has granted nearly $16 million to over 100 farm organizations, churches and services agencies in 44 states.

For more information, or to contact Farm Aid, see their website at: www.farmaid.org