Free Trade: Questionable Organic Grain Floods U.S. — Report
The majority of feed grains being fed to U.S. livestock certified as organic, the Cornucopia Institute says. More than 50% of organic corn and 80% to 90% of soybeans are being imported, and a lot of those imports don’t necessarily meet the U.S. organic standards, it adds.
The Institute says the U.S. has become a dumping ground for imports of fraudulent organic corn, soybeans and other commodities after the European Union cracked down on abuses in former Soviet Bloc nations.
USDA had “looked the other way” on documentation concerning fraud from China and Eastern Europe for over a decade, said Mark A. Kastel, Cornucopia’s codirector.
In 2014, the U.S. imported 14,000 metric tons of organic soybeans from Turkey. That number skyrocketed to 165,000 metric tons in 2016. Organic corn imports from Turkey increased more dramatically, going from 15,000 metric tons in 2014 to more than 399,000 by 2016. Based on available data sources, in the year 2015, the U.S. imported over three and half times as much organic corn as the country purportedly produced.
“What we have is a mathematical impossibility,” said Anne Ross, primary author of Cornucopia’s white paper. “When organic acreage reported for these countries cannot produce the organic grain yields that the U.S. is importing, either the product is fake or the data is so unreliable that the U.S. ought to ban organic shipments from countries where meaningful records on organic production can’t be extrapolated.”
At least five foreign operations showing affiliations with Turkish grain traders recently surrendered their organic certifications, Cornucopia said.