Andy Martin deftly sizes up the situation in today's NYT:

The National Organic Program, which regulates the industry, has just nine staff members and an annual budget of $1.5 million. A Florida real estate developer named Maurice Wilder received more than that in farm subsidies in 2005, some $1,754,916, to be exact, according to a subsidy database maintained by the Environmental Working Group.

Press accounts vary on Mr. Wilder's worth. This terrific story by DTN's Chris Clayton says it's somewhere to the north of $500 million. But Mr. Wilder says he couldn't make a go of it in farming without his subsidies.

Martin again:

With just nine employees, one of whom performs clerical duties, the National Organic Program would be lucky to effectively oversee the organic industry in Vermont, let alone the rest of the world.

“It’s a joke,” said George L. Siemon, who is chief executive of Organic Valley, a Wisconsin-based farmers’ cooperative, and is a former member of the National Organic Standards Board, an advisory board for the National Organic Program. “This is a pitiful amount of money, and we are running into all kinds of trouble.”

Mr. Siemon cited a rash of bad publicity about organics that has suggested that companies were trying to bend the organic rules.

One problem with such a small staff, he said, is that regulations take years to complete because so much work is stacked up. New pasture requirements for livestock, for instance, have been languishing for years.

As for the increase in organic imports from China, Mr. Siemon said: “Maybe everything is great and maybe it’s not. But it would be great if the U.S.D.A. had done a lot more work over there to find out what’s going on.”

As we'll be describing this coming week, the House-passed farm bill makes negligible improvements to this sorry state of affairs, sprinkling leftover budget dust over a few organic programs.