NCC Resigns from Controversial Initiative
October 26, 2010 Major agricultural groups, including the NCC, resigned from a multi-stakeholder effort to develop a consensus-based national standard for sustainable agriculture. The reason for the resignation was “systemic limitations and chronic” anti-agriculture biases in the composition of the Standards Committee membership, which was weighted heavily toward organic production.
The Leonardo Academy and its principal financial sponsor, Scientific Certification Systems, had undertaken an effort in ’07 to develop a draft national standard for sustainable agriculture under a consensus-based process governed by the American National Standards Institute. “Sustainable” agriculture is being promoted as a marketing tool by some major retailers (see www.walmartstores.com for their recently published sustainability goals).
A letter addressed to Michael Arny, Leonardo Academy president, was signed by 10 national agricultural organization voting members, including Dr. Bill Norman, the NCC’s vice president, Technical Services, on the nearly 60-member Committee. The letter also was endorsed by 46 other agricultural organizations nationwide.
The resignation letter stated, “A successful American National Standards Institute (ANSI) sustainable agriculture standard cannot be developed without the fair representation and participation of those representing the overwhelming majority of U.S. agriculture which constitutes 95 percent of production. Unfortunately, mainstream agriculture has been given a decidedly minor voice in Leonardo Academy’s process.”
Despite these Committee limitations, representatives of major agricultural commodities worked within the Leonardo Academy process for nearly two years to achieve broad consensus on achievable environmental, economic and social components of sustainability. Recent actions taken by others on the Committee undercut some key language that was agreed upon in subcommittee negotiations and precipitated the walk-out of mainstream agriculture.
The agricultural organizations stressed in their resignation letter that they remain supportive of the goal of sustainable agriculture and intend to pursue a “valid approach” in another venue.
Specifically, the NCC remains committed to development and implementation of a valid approach to US cotton industry sustainability. For example, one of the three goals of “Vision 21,” a Cotton Foundation project jointly managed by the NCC, Cotton Council International and Cotton Incorporated, is completion of life-cycle studies to strengthen US cotton’s sustainability message. Data is being collected and analyzed across the entire industry spectrum in the categories of cotton growth and cultivation, fabric manufacture, packaging, distribution, use, and end-of-life. The overall ambition is to develop policies and program initiatives that will contribute to real sustainability of American agriculture.
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