USDA official says People's Garden will promote organic standards

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, who wrote the organic standards act when she worked for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is beloved in organic circles as the government mother of organic agriculture. But the industrial agricultural establishment, which uses synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to produce most U.S. crops and foods and ships them around the world, is afraid she will use her power to favor organic and local production.

So when Merrigan made her first public appearance by opening the new People's Garden at the side of USDA's headquarters last Wednesday on Earth Day, all eyes and ears were upon her. The event itself was about as far from a field of genetically modified corn, soybeans or cotton as possible.

Walking through mud and planting boxes of organic vegetables, culinary and medicinal herbs and pollinator friendly plants that had been put there the day before, Merrigan said the USDA People's Garden is an appropriate use of what has been the lawn of the Whitten headquarters building because the entire Mall had once been a USDA research facility.

She introduced Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Joseph Brings Plenty, who performed a traditional ceremonial song and planted a "Three Sisters Garden" composed of corn, beans and squash. When a reporter asked whether she was using the garden to promote organic over conventional agriculture, she avoided a direct answer, saying the garden would promote USDA's organic standards, which most people do not understand. The garden will be USDA-organic certified after the three-year waiting period that USDA requires to ensure all fertilizer and pesticides are gone, Merrigan explained.

She also repeated Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's challenge to USDA facilities worldwide to create similar gardens and create healthier landscapes. When asked if the gardens at USDA facilities around the world have to be organic, Merrigan replied she understands that organic is not possible everywhere because she comes from New England, where it is hard to raise some crops organically. Gardening methods "are not going to be dictated decisions from headquarters," she said. That should come as a relief to USDA's workers in Farm Service Agency, Rural Development and Natural Resources and Conservation Service offices in nearly every county in the country, as well as Foreign Agricultural Service offices overseas. The workers will undoubtedly want their gardens to be blooming by whatever method when Vilsack and Merrigan visit and ask to see them.