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Five New Members Join the National Organic Standards Board
The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) plays a critical role in
maintaining integrity in the USDA Organic standards by making recommendations about whether a substance should be allowed or prohibited
in organic and providing other important regulatory guidance. The 15-
member advisory board is comprised of four organic producers, two handlers, three environmentalists, three consumer advocates, a scientist, an
organic retailer, and an organic certifier. This fall, five new members were
appointed to the board. Their five-year terms start Jan. 24, 2011.
The appointees include:
• Colehour J. Bondera, an organic producer from Honau-nau, Hawaii. Bondera farms at Kanalani Ohana Farm and
produces organic coffee, vegetables, avocados, fruit and
cacao. He is a board member of the Kona Coffee Farmers
Association and has spoken at many workshops on organic
agriculture;
• Nicholas C. Maravell, an organic producer from Potomac, Md. Maravell is owner of Nick’s Organic Farm,
which has been operating since 1979. He participates in
on-farm research and actively engages in policy discussions
concerning organic legislation;
• Robert Mac Stone, a certifying agent representative from
Georgetown, Ky. Stone is the executive director for the
Kentucky Department of Agriculture and oversees the Kentucky Organic Program. Stone is also co-manager of the
Elmwood Stock Farm, a certified organic farm in Georgetown, Ky.;
• Jennifer E. Taylor, a public interest representative from
Tallahassee, Fla. Taylor is the small farms program coordi-
nator at Florida A&M University. The program is designed
to assist and equip underserved farming communities and
their families toward sustainable development; and
• Reuben C. Walker, a public interest representative from
Lafayette, La. Walker is a researcher of small scale organic
operations and professor and program leader at Southern
University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, La. He is cur-
rently involved in transitioning the university’s pork farm to
an organic production system.
Mark Your Calendars
Don’t miss the next NOSB meeting! The Spring 2011
NOSB meeting is set for April 26-29, 2011 in Seattle,
Washington. The meeting agenda and additional details
will be posted on the NOSB Meetings page on
www.ams.usda.gov as they become available. The
meeting will be held at the Red Lion Hotel on Fifth
Avenue. Ask for rooms held under the USDA block.
The Sustainable Food Summit
Coming to San Francisco
Keep on top of eco-issues by attending The Sustainable Foods Summit. The third edition of this executive summit will take place in San Francisco on
January 18-19, 2011.
At the North American summit, new frontiers
for eco-labels will be explored, including offsetting
carbon emissions, water footprints, buying local
and biodiversity. A session is also devoted to ethical sourcing, sustainable ingredients and assessing
the ecological and social impacts of raw materials
in the food industry. The Organic Plus session gives
case studies of organic food companies who are
going beyond organic regulatory requirements and
pioneering additional sustainability
initiatives. For further information go to:
www.sustainablefoodssummit.com.
Bob Quinn of Kamut Intl. Receives OTA’s
Leadership Award for Organic Agriculture
The Organic Trade Association awarded
Kamut International founder and president
Bob Quinn its 2010 Organic
Leadership Award in the
“Growing Organic Agriculture”
category at the Natural Product
Expo East in Boston this October. The leadership awards are
OTA’s highest honors, given
annually to individuals who exemplify innovation and vision in the organic movement.
An organic farmer since the 1970’s, Quinn
has made it his mission to help boost the organic industry through ingenuity and research.
He created the Kamut brand to preserve and
promote this ancient grain globally, even requiring licensees to only grow it organically. So far
in 2010, global sales of Kamut khorasan wheat
have soared 40 percent.
Quinn has promoted organic farming
throughout Montana and nationwide, including
influencing U.S. Senator Jon Tester to become
an organic Kamut farmer. In addition, he
worked closely with Montana State University to
explore sustainable and organic farming systems, co-formed the first large-scale wind farm
in Montana and developed a project to grow
and process enough straight vegetable oil to
run all of his farm’s equipment on his own land.
