US import figures suggest countries are selling more organic agricultural products than they have capacity to produce, raising questions about the likelihood of food fraud and mislabelled organic products entering the US market. According to the figures presented at a recent USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum, US-produced organic corn and soybean increasd 12.9 per cent and 12.3 per cent respectively since 2014, making the US the largest producer of both these crops. Import data, however, shows that foreign-produced organic-labelled products have also increased, with imports of organic soybean increasing 13 per cent and imports of organic corn increasing 5.9 per cent in 2017. According to Peter Golbitz, founder of organic consulting service Agromeris, the amount of organic-labelled corn and soybean being imported from some countries into the US is above what those countries can produce, raising concerns of mislabelling and fraud. This is one of the reasons why a new Bill is being proposed called the "Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act", which would seek to provide the USDA's National Organic Program with between $15m and $20m a year from 2018 to 2023 to upgrade compliance and enforcement actions in the US and abroad, while an additional $5m would improve tracking of international organic trade.
Read the article at: Organic Import Data
Also look at our previous News on this USDA initiative
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