Big Ag Attacks Organics: Who is Mischa Popoff?

When The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group, officially launched in April 2004, one of its primary issue areas was what it referred to as "The Corporate Attack on Organic Agriculture."  At the time, Cornucopia's focus was on the father and son team of Dennis and Alex Avery at the ultra-conservative Hudson Institute's campaign to discredit organics.  Now, in 2011, after seven years of successfully exposing the genesis of Hudson's ire, and greatly diminishing its effectiveness, a new generation of "Trojan horse" naysayers has emerged.

The latest attacks come from Mischa Popoff, a Canadian who purports to be an advocate for organics and is publicizing his self-published book entitled Is It Organic?  The author misses few opportunities to impugn the integrity of the organic label, or USDA oversight, while simultaneously defending biotechnology and the industrial agriculture system that organics seeks to replace.

"Addressing the potential damage from attacks by the Hudson Institute, and other right-wing think tanks such as the Hoover Institution, the Heartland Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was relatively easy," said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector at the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.  "Every rebuttal that we published, or preemptive media advisory we issued, was put into context by including the corporate agribusiness funding base for the work of these entities."  

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