Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States by Brian K. Obach

Abstract

Reviewed by: Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States by Brian K. Obach Amrys O. Williams (bio) Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States. By Brian K. Obach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Pp. 327. $32. The growth of organic food has been one of the signature changes in American agriculture in recent decades. Brian Obach has made a valuable contribution with this exploration of organic farming’s move from hippie fringe to Wal-Mart. Obach, who teaches sociology at SUNY New Paltz, has had a front-row seat for this transformation, interviewing organic farmers, representatives of organic associations, and policymakers along the way. The result is a detailed account of the process by which a philosophy of farming became a regulated phase of the agricultural industry. Obach treats organic agriculture as a social movement—not just a means of growing crops and raising animals, but a philosophy of land use. Organic farming developed in the early twentieth century as a critique of industrial farming practices and the state and corporate infrastructure supporting them. The movement adopted a “prefigurative” approach to social change through personal choices and alternative institutions that would have long-term consequences. Seen by the mainstream as health-faddism for most of the century, organic practices received little support from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Organic farmers likewise shunned the state, creating their own regional associations to share ideas and establish standards by the 1970s. The movement’s alternative infrastructure and aversion to state control was an asset and a liability as consumers, worried about the environmental and health consequences of conventional agriculture, flocked to organic produce, and were willing to pay a premium for it. Organic farmers grew concerned that they would lose their market niche to conventional growers moving into the field to make a profit, and their quality reputation to producers who were not organic but were marketing organic products. Debates over quality control and the threat of fraud, combined with rising [End Page 895] consumer interest in the wake of food scares, led to state legislation in the 1980s, and eventually prompted organic farmers to invite federal help in creating a national organic standard. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 marked the first step in this process. The heart of the book charts the creation of the National Organic Program (NOP), administered by the Department of Agriculture, which established the now familiar green-and-white “USDA Organic” label in 2002. The “organic struggle” of the title is not just the movement’s fight for sustainable agriculture, but the conflict involved in establishing “organic” as a legal category. Obach’s communications with key players in the development of the NOP enliven a story in which the individual and institutional actors are many. He should be congratulated for making sense of a complex process, though a reference page of acronyms would have been helpful. Obach shows that the NOP was the result of a long negotiation among competing aims—of growers, consumers, food processors, and policymakers—in which organic farmers were often the weakest and least politically mature constituency. Fissures within the organic community—between “spreaders,” who saw the expansion of organic agriculture of any kind as a benefit, and “tillers,” who sought to maintain the purity of organic farming outside of the dominant food system—and between organic farmers and their allies in the consumer and environmental movements were reflected in the NOP’s design, and paved the way for what some saw as the cooption of organic by big corporations. In fact, Obach argues, state regulation did not represent a rupture in the organic movement, but simply bolstered its existing market-based approach to reform. These rules and regulations helped create the organic marketplace and the food movement we know today. While Obach sees the “organic struggle” as a necessary step toward a more sustainable food system, he recognizes the limits of market-based reform. Historians of technology, agriculture, business, and capitalism will be interested in this study of standards-in-the-making. The story of industry groups seeking government regulation they can control is a familiar one in business history, so...