Is Politics Killing Our Organic Organizations? Reflections on Declining Conference Attendance
This is typically the time of year when I would announce my speaking lineup for 2027. For the past two years, I’ve spoken at one or two state organization conferences each winter, which has been super helpful in building my platform and getting more people aware of my work. But as of now, the only upcoming speaking engagement I have is at the Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conference in Iowa City, on December 4. If you happen to be in the area, don’t miss my workshop on a behind-the-scenes look at my new book, The Cold War Against Organic!
I admit, I’m not too sad about not having to drive for five hours in a snowstorm if this winter shapes up to be as cold and snowy as last year. But I have to be honest—I’m worried about the future of some of our state and regional organic conferences. They just keep getting smaller and smaller every year, which is why most of them can’t pay travel expenses for an out-of-state speaker like me.
It could be easy to dismiss the decline in conference attendance as simply a sign of the times. Maybe big conferences are a vestige of the 1990s. Maybe we're still recovering from the pandemic. Maybe younger folks don’t network that way anymore, preferring to use social media and watch YouTube videos. I’m sure that’s true to some degree—and yet, attendance at the Acres conference isn’t going down. There was an atmosphere of positivity about the future at Eco-Ag last year, a sense that the movement was growing.
So what’s going on? Well, I’ve talked to enough people to realize that pretty much everyone who is paying attention to this trend knows what the problem is, but they’re afraid to speak up because they don’t want to hurt and divide these organizations. They either keep quietly attending or quietly leave. And more and more people—even long-time organic farmers—are choosing the “quietly leave” option. That’s why the organizations are shrinking.
I’ve hesitated to say anything because I, too, don’t want to hurt these organizations or the organic movement. But things seem to be getting worse, not better, so I might as well say it—partisan politics is killing many of our organic organizations. That’s why attendance is down. That’s why they’re chronically short of money. They tied all their hopes to one political ideology, and when that ideology lost its power at the federal level, it’s pulled the organic organizations with it.
I really had high hopes for one of the conferences I spoke at last year. The leaders invited me to deliver a unifying message about what brings organic farmers together. It was a topic I wouldn’t have dared propose on my own, but I agreed and did my best to give them what I thought they wanted—a stirring presentation about how we can use our diversity as a source of strength rather than division to work together for organic.
Generally speaking, it felt like my talk was well-received. But then I made the mistake of opening it up to questions—something that, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have done on a somewhat controversial topic. And I got a question framed in politically charged language. I couldn’t answer it in any positive way without getting into politics—the very thing I had just emphasized we needed to avoid—and so I simply reiterated my point that we needed to focus on what we had in common and work together.
Aside from that one question, I felt good about my presentation afterwards. I sold lots of books and talked to lots of people who told me that they really appreciated my talk. One of the staff members told me that evening that the initial online evaluations of my talk were all positive. But there was at least one negative evaluation—from the person who asked the provocative question. And that was the one and only evaluation that the leadership forwarded to me. They never let me see any of the positive feedback.
I don’t share this story to complain or to pick on any specific organization. I share it as a warning. From what I’ve heard and seen, this same thing is happening in many leading organic organizations. They've let the extremist political views of a very small number of people shape the direction of the entire organization. But most farmers and rural people do not agree with that particular political stance. The leadership has lost connection with the membership. If these organizations continue to use politically charged language that turns off rural people, they will continue to shrink and become less effective.
Please note—I am not saying that these organizations should go the other way and identify as politically conservative. I am not saying that any individual should change their personal beliefs or political involvement. What I am saying is that the only way organic farming is ever going to become widely accepted in rural America is if it stays completely out of partisan politics. There are lots of practical reasons for that, one of the biggest being that any politically partisan federal program is only going to last four to eight years before the other party takes over and reverses everything.
Only nonpartisan programs can endure for any extended period of time in America. And I think organic farming is too important to risk tying it to the vagaries of partisan politics.
