By John Motoviloff
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

That Organic Valley, the nation's largest organic farming cooperative, is located in the Wisconsin should come as little surprise. The Badger state often blazes the trail for others to follow when it comes to land use. Naturalist Aldo Leopold founded the first wildlife ecology department at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Gaylord Nelson, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, organized the first Earth Day. Wisconsin citizens have sent corporate giants like Perrier and Exxon packing in defense of our rivers. Even our literary heritage -- Gordon MacQuarrie, George Vukelich, Ben Logan, Jane Hamilton, and others -- is inseparable from environmental themes. But why -- amid a cultural zeitgeist flaunting Lexuses and McMansions -- is organic farming now booming? Why is Organic Valley headquartered in sleepy La Farge, hours from any large city? And how does this homespun co-op compete in the fast-growing, 21.4-billion-dollar-a-year organic food industry? The answer has to do with Organic Valley's often-barefoot CEO, George Siemon, family farms following a green dream, and a valley that halted federal efforts thirty years ago to dam the river running through it.

Why Now?

At first glance, growth in organic farming, or farming of any kind, seems improbable. We have not been an agrarian nation since long before World War II. In Dane County and beyond, cropland and woodlots are bulldozed and turned into housing developments at an unprecedented rate. Shopping centers spring up. Rush hours follow. Before long, what was once rural becomes suburban, exurban. With acres of paved space, a car-bound lifestyle, and average house square footage near three thousand, most new development is not earth-friendly. And, surely, it is far removed from farms and food production.

But America has always been a place of diversity. Where one trend exists, another countervailing tendency often arises beside it. Madison -- epicenter of Dane County growth -- supports Williamson Street Cooperative, the state's largest natural foods co-op, plus a half-dozen grocers specializing in natural foods. Ashland, River Falls, Hayward, Green Bay, Neenah, Stevens Point, La Crosse, and Milwaukee all have co-ops or natural food stores. Mainstream grocery chains like Copp's, Woodman's, Cub, and Pick-and-Save now carry organic foods. So what is going on? Are both trends real? Is organic food still just a fringe thing? Or are we witnessing something more dramatic -- a shift in the way we think about food and its production?

Both appear to be true. USDA-certified organic cropland constitutes less than one percent of all U.S. cropland, a tiny speck of green in a hard-farmed landscape dominated by agribusiness. But farmers and landowners indicate that actual acreage of organic cropland may be much higher. For example, some farms are organic in practice though they are still completing the three-year organic certification process. Other operations (both new and longstanding) claim to farm organically but eschew organic certification and paperwork -- they say they don't use pesticides and their customers trust them. Then there are farms where crops are grown and animals raised in a generally earth-friendly way, with few or no pesticides or antibiotics. Looked at this way, organic acreage is probably closer to five or ten percent (and growing) of all U.S. cropland -- hardly a fringe anymore.

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