Promoting organic agriculture.

Organic agriculture - the production and marketing of foods grown with few or no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers - is flourishing in many parts of the United States. And according to two recently published reports, these techniques represent one area of a whole range of alternative and sustainable-agricultural

Farmers successfully adopting alternative farming systems generally derive significant sustained economic and environmental benefits, according to a National Research Council report entitled Alternative Agriculture. Organic and other alternative systems can be profitable for farmers, even though many function with relatively little help from commodity income or price-support programs. Some, however, do rely on higher prices for their products. Wider adoption of proven alternative systems would result in even greater economic benefits to farmers and environmental gains for the nation, according to the study.

Another report, by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), notes that many states are developing programs to promote the use of organic-agriculture techniques. State legislatures, state departments of agriculture, and state-supported universities have taken steps to promote the use of organic and sustainable-agriculture techniques by farmers in their states. These steps include taxing pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, adopting standards for organic food, establishing statewide sustainable-agriculture programs, making low-interest loans available, and assisting the marketing of organic and locally grown food.

Farmers may face difficulties obtaining financing for new alternative-agriculture ventures for which they have no established earnings history. States promote this financing by establishing loan funds or programs to make below-market-interest loans available, the CSPI report notes. In 1988, the Minnesota legislature appropriated $1 million to finance a revolving sustainable-agriculture loan program, offering loans of up to $15,000 at 6% interest.

Some federal policies, which significantly influence farmers' choices of agricultural practices, actually work against environmentally benign practices and the adoption of alternative agricultural systems, according to the NRC report. An example of this relates to organic systems: Existing policies permit farmers to keep using pesticides that have known risks to human health but that were approved years ago under less-stringent criteria, while new, more-effective and safer substitutes are sometimes kept off the market by the regulatory approval process.

The NRC report concludes that the success of farmers who do engage in organic and other farming methods indicates that these alternative farming practices hold promise for many other farmers and potentially significant benefits for the nation.

Sources: Alternative Agriculture, National Research Council. 1989. 448 pages. $19.95 (paperback) or $29.95 (hardbound). Available from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20418. "Organic Agriculture: What the States Are Doing" by Dan Howell. Center for Science in the Public Interest. 1989. 39 pages. Paperback. $5. Available from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1501 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.