“The toughest thing is that your phone rings off the hook,” said North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring. “We never had a chance to work it out internally before it became public.”
Goehring suggested that perhaps the draft report had been posted because some of the discussion had not gone in a direction that some groups wanted, but Schechtman said it had to be public because the committee is a federal advisory committee.
Although the committee has been formed to focus on compensation, Angela Olsen, a senior adviser and associate general counsel for Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, said “We have seen no evidence of economic losses to date, therefore it is premature to have a discussion about a compensation mechanism.”
The draft includes three options involving crop insurance — one that would direct the secretary to determine if there are losses and, if so, develop a crop insurance mechanism, a second that would recommend a crop insurance pilot program, and a third that would involve evaluation of the economic data and establishment of a crop insurance program in a region of the country where losses have occurred.
“I can support Option One but I want it clear it is a compromise,” Olsen said.
Laura Batcha, executive vice president of the Organic Trade Association, said she could support Option Two.
But Marilyn Howell Martens, an organic farmer from Penn Yan, N.Y., said “Organic farmers don’t want compensation mechanisms. They don’t want to buy insurance. “
Instead, she said, they want assurances that their crops will not be contaminated.
Some members suggested that technical agreements between the companies and the farmers could include provisions for consultation among farmers, but it would probably be impossible to enforce those provisions.
Melissa Hughes, the general counsel and director of government affairs for CROPP Cooperative/Organic Valley Family of Farms, said that the compensation mechanism could be a way to avoid conflicts among farmers.
