Bob Scowcroft, Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF)2003 : Legislative and Regulatory Award An activist, Bob Scowcroft first joined the environmental movement to work on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in the early 1970s, and later became a national organizer on pesticide issues for Friends of the Earth (FOE). As organizer for FOE, he set up a table at the Natural Foods Merchandiser Trade Show, advocating a ban on Agent Orange because of the drift of that herbicide onto nearby farms. In 1987 he was hired as executive director for CCOF. He led that organization through tremendous expansion during the exponential growth of the organic industry over the next few years. In 1992, Scowcroft left CCOF to found and direct OFRF. He has been engaged in nearly every political development in the national organic and sustainable agriculture movement in the past twenty years—from the controversy over the contamination of apples with the pesticide Alar in the late 1980s, to the fight to pass the California Organic Foods Act of 1990, to battles over federal standards for organic certification in the 1990s, to recent lobbying efforts to secure more funding for organic farming research in the Farm Bill. |