That dismays some in the organic movement who believe the "local" aspect of organic farming is as important as the process. But producers say they have no other choice.
"The imports aren't supplanting what we grow here," said Katherine DiMatteo of the Organic Trade Assn. in Greenfield, Mass. "People are going there because we don't have enough. It's a question of conversion of U.S. land to more organics."
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released in February 2005 estimated that organic imports exceeded exports 8 to 1. U.S. imports of organic products are estimated at $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year.
If a product is not made of at least 95% certified organic ingredients, it cannot be labeled "organic." And the supply of organic raw materials is so tight in the United States that Stonyfield Farm of Londonderry, N.H., has had to substitute ingredients and remove the "organic" label from several items in its line of yogurts, ice creams and drinks.
"It's like a morgue in here when that happens," said Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of natural resources for Stonyfield Farm, who buys her company's sugar from Balbo in Brazil. "That's exactly the direction we don't want to go."
In the dairy industry, growth is penned in by the scarcity of organic feed, said Lynn Clarkson, president of Clarkson Grain in Cerro Gordo, Ill. Dairy farmers have to look overseas, primarily to China.
Beyond that, farmers in some other countries are just better prepared to answer the demand for organic products, Clarkson said.
He mentioned China, Brazil and Argentina as having fewer obstacles to organic farming, partly because their land has been less subjected to chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
"They have land that they can instantly certify as organic because they haven't put anything on it," he said. "Most U.S. land has to go through a three-year transition."
The transition for Balbo was not as easy as clearing a new patch and seeding it with cane. Balbo had to wean Sao Francisco's fields off chemicals, and he had to change the way the mill processed the sugar to meet the standards demanded by the organic industry.
"People said to me, 'You are going to ruin the family business,' " Balbo recalled.
But Balbo persuaded his partners and bosses to stick with the Green Cane Project, as the conversion was called, through the 1995-97 transition years. By 2000, Sao Francisco's yields had surpassed the best harvests achieved using conventional methods.
