Texas Organic Label First in Nation
New PHIT documentary
Texas! First in the nation!
Wait a minute!!. What??
The first?
Yes…dear readers. Texas has bragging rights! In 1987, Texas was the first state to certify and label produce as Organic, the first state to develop state-wide standards, and the first state to provide competent regulation to verify that the produce was truly organic. Texas farmers, by having a verifiable label, gained an advantage in selling organic produce to people who wanted a pesticide-free eating experience.
Texas Organic Label First in Nation
PHIT has created a short documentary on organics in Texas. Please feel free to use it for educational purposes and tell your friends about it. If you really like it, you might think about a paid subscription to this PHIT substack. Any money raised will be used to create more educational materials.
The Hightower Texas Department of Agriculture developed the Texas Organic Label in order to help small farmers develop a product that was more value-added and that avoided competition with huge agribusiness corporations.
Consumers were looking for a pesticide free product and the Hightower TDA felt that if people wanted to buy it, then they should help farmers produce it.
Hightower described the process in a recent interview with PHIT.
“More and more consumers began to try it and say, ‘Well, this is better.’ Then the local farmers that were often hardscrabble family operations began to get more markets, and then to develop their distribution system even larger, so it spread on its own. Then we came in and put some marketing “oomph” behind it then some political “oomph” as well.”
In 1989, the Alar scandal hit the news. Apple farmers had been spraying their apples with Alar, a carcinogenic growth regulator. Meryl Streep, the famous actor, raised the alarm and people suddenly were very concerned about the quality of their produce. People desperately wanted a guarantee that the fruits that they were buying at the grocery store weren’t going to cause cancer their children. Honestly, it seemed reasonable enough request.
Jim Hightower told PHIT, “It woke people up who weren’t paying any attention to whether it was organic or not. It was food. If it tasted good, or approximately good, then good enough. I think of Bernard Rapoport, a supporter of mine up in Waco, who ran an insurance company up there. A great progressive human being. He called me. He’d called Ralph Nader first, and then he called me when the Alar story came out on apples and he said, “You've got to do something, you've got to do something! I buy apples for my grandchildren. I’m poisoning them. You've got to do something’” We had that political dynamic bubbling all around the state: in families, in the marketing itself, the restaurants and supermarket people. They began to pay attention because of that.”
The number of consumers actively looking for organic produce in the late 1980s and 1990s multiplied a hundredfold. And Texas provided that guarantee of Organic and pesticide free. Consumers looked to Texas and the Texas Organic Label for their safe fruits and vegetables.
Once the Texas economic advantage was recognized, other states created their own organic standards, and, naturally, every state had slightly different standards from every other state. Consumers were understandably confused. The organic industry finally requested that the Federal Government create national organic standards so there would be no consumer confusion.
Senator Leahy of Vermont had advocated for nearly a decade for such a law and now the opportunity was handed to him on a golden platter, handed to him by Hightower and the Texas Department of Agriculture. And, voila, the National Organic Program was passed in 1990, leading, after a ridiculously lengthy review by a foot-dragging USDA, to a national Organic label to 2002.