Last week, Washington Post reported Laura Reiley reported that, “As organic food shifts from utopian movement to lucrative industry, a war is being waged for its soul.

“Record organic sales in the United States totaled nearly $50 billion in 2017 according to the Organic Trade Association. Although organic food still represents only 5.5 percent of food sold, its year-over-year growth has been meteoric — taking a cue from conventional agriculture’s mantra: ‘Get big or get out.’

“This has resulted in organic growers and food companies that, although technically adhering to the definition of organic — no chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics or pesticides — are a far cry from the idealism and high standards with which the movement began.”

The Post article stated that, “Now the Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group best known as an organic industry watchdog, is trying to promote higher standards among the accredited certifying agents hired by organic farmers, processors and handlers to ensure that their practices comply with regulations established when Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. Organic farmers’ original intent was to create a level playing field in the market and to provide consumers assurance about a minimum uniform standard for organic production.

“In a scorecard set to be released this week, the Cornucopia Institute ranked all 45 domestic certifiers on their adherence to the spirit and letter of the organic law. The institute found significant variation in how certifiers interpret regulations, variation that frequently benefits huge corporate farms and competitively disadvantages those comporting themselves ethically.”

The Post article added: “‘Organic is the only federally set label that has legal meaning. It’s not perfect, but I know what it is,’ said George Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety. He suggested that ‘organic’ may best be seen as a floor, and that socially just foods and climate-friendly foods are needed.”

Bloomberg writers Alfred Cang and Lulu Yilun Chen reported yesterday that, “Streaming apps have taken China by storm with short videos of dancing teens, lip-syncing and all kinds of weird antics. Now traders are using them to predict the future of grain prices.

“For example, a farmer in the rural northeast is using his phone to film trucks lining up to load mounds of golden corn. Some 2,000 miles away in his Shenzhen office, Honda Wei watches attentively, scrutinizing the producer’s excited utterances and images of his fields for clues on supply and demand.

“‘It provides intuitive information about the domestic markets,’ 33-year-old Wei said of his experience on the Kuaishou app, a short-form video platform backed by tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. ‘Traders are seeking correlations between farmers’ sentiment and futures price fluctuation.'”

The Bloomberg article stated that, “With more than 700 million users combined, Kuaishou and Bytedance Ltd.’s Douyin offer a vast potential source of intelligence in an opaque Chinese market where government data isn’t always the most reliable or efficient. Along with social media such as Weibo, traders are gathering information on crop plantings, harvests, stockpiles and sales in real-time, instead of the hours of telephone surveys and physical travel that were once necessary.”

The Bloomberg writers explained that, “While traders internationally have used Twitter to track opportunities, acting on everything from refinery fires and ship groundings to equity market sentiment, that’s not an option in China, where the U.S.-based social network is blocked.

“In their thirst for data, many in China have turned to streaming apps as farmers started filming themselves to connect with others and help improve productivity, manage costs and maximize profits. That trend has been helped by changes in the domestic market for commodities.”

“Kuaishou, which gained a reputation for stunts performed by streamers, was one of the first to focus on growth in lower tier cities and rural areas. That helped it become the streaming app of choice for farmers, as smartphone use rises and demographics work in its favor,” the article said.

The Associated Press reported last week that, “Smithfield Foods was found responsible Friday for a fifth time for nuisances neighbors suffered from waste generated by thousands of the company’s hogs. Jurors determined the pork giant should pay $420,000 after four previous juries awarded nearly $550 million in penalties.

“Most of the damages awarded were intended to punish Smithfield Foods for its actions, but a state law limiting the size of punitive awards means they are automatically capped.

“Friday’s verdict was the second time a jury heard about intense smells, clouds of flies and other conditions around the same Duplin County [North Carolina] operation that raised about 5,000 of the company’s animals.”

The AP article indicated that, “Agricultural interests and sympathetic politicians have warned the lawsuits threaten all farmers if whopping penalties can be slapped on operations that are regulated and annually inspected as North Carolina hog operations are.”

“Environmental advocates have cheered the big penalties as finally forcing pork producers to acknowledge long-standing complaints from neighbors and claims that animal waste has polluted waterways,” the AP article said.

Des Moines Register writer Stephen Gruber-Miller reported earlier this week that, “With Iowa’s controversial ‘ag gag’ law on appeal in the courts, lawmakers are considering a narrower bill that would create a special trespassing crime for agricultural facilities.

“Supporters say the law is necessary to protect farmers from people who intend to hurt their industry while opponents say it harms free speech.

“If the bill becomes law, it would be a crime to use deception to gain access to an agricultural production facility that is not open to the public ‘with the intent to cause physical or economic harm or other injury‘ to the facility’s operations, animals, personnel, business interests or customers.”

The Register article noted that, “A first offense would be a serious misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail, while a second offense would be an aggravated misdemeanor, which carries a two-year sentence. The bill advanced unanimously out of a three-member House subcommittee Tuesday morning and an identical measure passed a Senate subcommittee Tuesday afternoon.

“The 2012 ‘ag gag’ law was struck down in January when a judge said it unconstitutionally violated free speech protections under the First Amendment. Iowa has appealed the ruling.

“That law made it a crime for journalists and advocacy groups to operate undercover at meatpacking plants, livestock confinements, puppy mills and other ag-related operations to investigate working conditions, animal welfare, food safety and environmental hazards, among other practices.”

Mr. Miller added that, “Rep. Bruce Bearinger, D-Oelwein, said he appreciates the narrowness of the new proposal.

“‘I think it is important to recognize that dishonest access to those properties is a huge risk,’ including the potential spread of diseases and bio-terrorism, he said.

“Iowa leads the nation in pork and egg production. It ranks seventh for beef and 12th for milk production.”

DTN writer Emily Unglesbee reported yesterday that, “State pesticide regulators are responsible for overseeing a lot of chemicals, but some expect to police only one this year — dicamba.

“‘So many resources are dedicated to dicamba that it has made my program a one-issue program,’ said Tim Creger, a pesticide regulator with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. As his agency has spent the past two years investigating roughly 200 complaints of off-target dicamba injury, they have had to delay or abandon routine pesticide inspections, Creger told regulators, scientists and agrichemical companies gathered for the annual meeting of the Association of American Pesticide Control Officers in Virginia this week.

“‘We have a lot of other [pesticide regulation] problems — I’ve had to push those off for two years,’ Creger said. ‘Other issues that don’t have the priority this product has are not getting the service they deserve. And that’s what it looks to me again coming up in 2019 — it’s deja vu.'”

The DTN article noted that, “With 60 million acres of dicamba-tolerant Xtend crops expected this spring, many soybeans and cotton fields will be protected from damage from dicamba drift and volatility, noted Dan Kenny, herbicide branch chief for EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. ‘We don’t want that to create a false positive,’ he said. ‘We want to focus not just on [soybean] acres this year, but also other crops that might be sensitive … and also focus on effects on perennial crops. Vineyards, orchards, things like that.’

“Several state pesticide officials assured Kenny they expect the federal agency to get plenty of data on dicamba injury this year. ‘We don’t have an apparent end in sight,’ Creger said of off-target dicamba movement. ‘And I’m not alone in this — it just seems like there is no end in sight to the problems this will generate for us.'”

Yesterday’s article added, “Leo Reed, pesticide licensing manager for the Office of Indiana State Chemist, agreed. For two years in a row, Indiana has fielded record numbers of dicamba injury complaints. The OISC spent $1.2 million in 2018 alone investigating dicamba injury claims. The agency’s laboratory is still processing injury claims from 2018 and is braced for more. ‘How long we can sustain that is anybody’s guess,’ Reed said. ‘This devalues our agencies in as much as it’s literally all we’ve done for the last two years. Routine inspections have plummeted.'”