Sacramento, Calif. – For the first time, a university in the United States is offering a major in organic agriculture this fall.
It’s not at the University of California, Davis, one of the nation’s foremost agricultural schools, nor is it anywhere in California, the top state in certified organic cropland.
The program is at Washington State University, which is leading a movement among agricultural schools to put organic farming in the curriculum. The trend reflects rising consumer demand for food grown without the use of synthetic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones or genetic engineering.
Washington State is one of at least three universities expected to start programs soon specifically focused on organic agriculture.
Colorado State University is offering an interdisciplinary program in organic food and fiber production. Michigan State University is giving final review to a proposal for a 1 1/2-year certificate program in organic farming.
The University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, had the jump on everyone on the continent. In fall 2005, it was the first university in North America to offer an organic agriculture major.
“Face it, organic food and beverages are 2 percent of the market,” said John Reganold, a soil scientist at Washington State University who conceived his school’s organics major. “It’s here, and it’s growing.”
Most estimates peg the growth at 20 percent a year for more than a decade. Supermarket companies such as Safeway now offer their own store-brand organics. Wal-Mart pledged that it would put 400 organic food items on its shelves by summer.
California farmers are doing their part to meet the demand. The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show that California in 2003 had 177,000 acres of certified organic cropland, more than any other state. It also had 16,000 certified organic dairy cows, leading all states but Wisconsin.
California universities are responding to the trend, but not swiftly. At UC Davis, a proposal dating to 2002 to create an undergraduate major in sustainable agriculture is under review.
Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis, said such a major is at least a year off.
“In the UC system, the process of developing a whole new curriculum is a laborious and time-consuming process,” Van Alfen said.
The UC Davis major proposal differs from Washington State’s in that the field of study is “sustainable” agriculture rather than “organic.” The distinction is often a point of controversy.
To some ears, “organic” still connotes a fringe philosophy with hippie sensibilities and is interpreted as a rebuke to conventional farming. Others fear the term is being co-opted by big corporations with a history of industrial-style farming and selling highly processed foods.
Van Alfen maintains that “sustainable agriculture” is a broader term that puts a priority on environmentally friendly practices and examines sociological aspects of farming.
Under the USDA certification program, “organic” is defined by a set of farming practices. It does not speak to the question of, for example, whether the food was produced locally or shipped from abroad, grown on a small family farm or by an agribusiness giant.
“I would say that there are practices in organic agriculture that are unsustainable,” Van Alfen said. “For instance, one of the practices is that you don’t use artificial fertilizers; you use natural manures. But if you overuse it, that’s not sustainable either. The nitrates in manure are a problem too.”
Advocates of teaching organic agriculture favor the term because it has a discrete definition; “sustainable” does not.
Historically, the organic farming community has felt largely ignored by the nation’s big agricultural universities, also known as land-grant institutions.
John Biernbaum, a professor at Michigan State who helped put together his school’s proposal for a certificate program, said one point of tension relates to genetic engineering.
“There’s a lot of nervousness about the fact that organic does not allow genetically modified organisms, and the land-grant universities have invested heavily in that,” Biernbaum said.
UC Davis is among those with a heavy investment in biotechnology. Davis was, after all, the birthplace of the nation’s first genetically engineered crop, the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994.
Mark Lipson, policy program director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, said that while most organics advocates are not interested in genetically engineered organisms, they welcome other applications of molecular biology, such as gene-based tools to speed and improve traditional plant breeding.
“We need all the rocket science,” Lipson said. “That’s why UC really matters.”
Damian Parr, a UC Davis doctoral student in agricultural education, said it’s no surprise that heavyweights such as UC Davis would deliberate long and hard before changing course.
Said Parr: “It takes a lot to shift a worldview.”
