An Environmental and Public Health Disaster Awaits - If USDA Gives Organic Label to Hydroponics

by Alison Rose Levy
Alternet
10.30.17

Whether food production entails acres of mono-crops, livestock shuttled through assembly lines or orderly tracks of plastic pipelines in factory-scale hydroponics spaces, streamlined production techniques tempt food producers to improve on nature, without necessarily assessing the long-term health or environmental costs. Even an apparently benign innovation, like hydroponics, may convey unexpected downsides.

Despite each new agricultural novelty, 17 years after the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the Organic Standards, earth-based farming remains the oldest and most proven method for cultivating organic food. A coalition of farmers, sustainability advocates and foodies wants to keep it that way.

”If we want to protect the integrity of the organic seal, we will have to fight for it,” says Lisa Stokke, founder of Next7, which has launched a campaign to raise public awareness about the upcoming decision. Stokke hopes a vote at the October 31 meeting of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—which regulates the rules governing organic standards—will rectify what she calls “the wrongful designation of hydroponically grown foods as organic.”

Read more: https://www.alternet.org/2017/10/environmental-and-public-health-disaster-awaits-if-usda-gives-organic-label-hydroponics