The O Word

The O Word
Kristie and Rick Knoll were early pioneers of organic farming. So why are they now rebelling against organic?
By Will Harper

Published: Wednesday, January 5, 2005


Chris Duffey
Kristie and Rick Knoll are widely regarded in the organic-farming world as pioneers.
Chris Duffey
Every item is harvested by hand.
Chris Duffey
Kristie Knoll at a farmers' market.
Chris Duffey
Rick Knoll with one of his homeopathic "potions," which he uses to enrich the soil on his farm and fortify the plants against disease.
Chris Duffey
The Knolls grow year-round, fulfilling orders as they come in from Bay Area restaurants and grocery stores.
Chris Duffey
Knoll Farms could easily have qualified as organic under the new rules, but the Knolls opted out because they think the O word has been totally corrupted.
Chris Duffey
When you start using another term that no one recognizes, how do you hang on to all those customers you've trained to look for the organic label?



What passes for "organic" these days bugs the hell out of Rick and Kristie Knoll. For instance, there's the chlorine, the same chemical found in your swimming pool. Federal rules allow organic farmers to use it to wash their greens. To a farmer such as Kristie, who is intimately familiar with the aroma of newly harvested greens, a freshly opened plastic bag of organic salad reeks of chlorine.

Not only does the chemical kill off any bad microscopic organisms that might be on the greens, it also kills off the good ones. Rick Knoll spends months brewing homeopathic "potions" loaded with beneficial microorganisms that he uses to enrich the soil on his farm and fortify his plants against disease. He denounces the prevalent mentality that people are keeping themselves healthy by killing off all the microbes in their food. "In reality," he argues, "every day you want to eat food that has beneficial microorganisms on it -- that gets in your system, mutates, and causes you to be healthy."

To some they might sound like kooks, but the Knolls are widely regarded in the organic-farming world as pioneers. Their ten-acre farm in Brentwood supplies produce to some of the best restaurants in the East Bay, including Chez Panisse, Oliveto, and Dopo. More than two decades ago, they became among the first certified organic farmers in the Bay Area. That was when certification was a private affair, handled by an independent nonprofit agency. These days, the federal government has the final say on organic certification and who gets to legally use the phrase "organic." And as the feds were about to take over "organic" in October 2002, the Knolls were among the first and most prominent organic farmers to opt out and put the O word behind them.

Many environmentally oriented farmers viewed federal regulation as a great victory, the culmination of more than a decade of lobbying to get the Department of Agriculture to officially recognize organic farming as a legitimate enterprise. But a few purists like the Knolls viewed it as the end of the line. Federal recognition would also mean federal regulation -- regulation subject to manipulation by big agribusiness. Organic, after all, is now a $10.8-billion-a-year business, and even before the feds assumed oversight of the industry, the Knolls had been dismayed by the new corporate face of organic farming. General Mills, the maker of junk cereals including Trix and Lucky Charms, has owned the Cascadian Farm label, one of the oldest organic brands, since 1999.

Shortly after the federal program went into effect, people who didn't trust the government to protect the integrity of organic had their worst suspicions confirmed. In 2003, a Georgia congressman inserted language into a spending bill that would allow chicken farmers to give their "organic" chickens nonorganic feed to save money, although Senator Pat Leahy later managed to get the exemption repealed. Then, last spring, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, USDA administrators quietly tweaked organic rules to "expand the use of antibiotics and hormones in organic dairy cows, allow more pesticides in the organic arsenal, and for the first time let organic livestock eat potentially contaminated fishmeal." After a public outcry led by Consumers Union, the USDA withdrew the changes. Finally, this past October, organic watchdog Mark Kastel complained to the National Organic Standards Board that the mass-milking operations permitted by the USDA were incompatible with the true goals of organic farming. "You cannot milk ... five thousand cows -- milking them in many cases three times a day -- and provide them access to real pasture," said Kastel, cofounder of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

Knoll Farms could easily qualify as organic under the new rules, and the Knolls still don't use any pesticides or herbicides. But they opted out of organic farming because they think the O word has been totally corrupted. "What are people eating, exactly?" Rick asks. "Is it the organic food that they thought it was when they went to the farmers' market and first discovered it twenty years ago? No. ... It's become so perverse that it's not fixable. We need to start over again."

But if you don't call it organic, then what do you call it? And when you start using another term that no one recognizes, how do you hang on to all those customers you've trained to look for the organic label?
more of this article: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-01-05/news/feature.html