OTA Honors Organic Leaders

BRATTLEBORO, Vt.—The Organic Trade Association (OTA) selected Michael Funk of United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) and Mark Lipson of the USDA to receive its Organic Leadership Awards for 2011 for their commitment to the organic movement.

Funk, UNFI’s chairman of the board, will receive the OTA Organic Leadership Award in the “Growing Organic Industry" category, while Lipson, organic and sustainable agriculture policy advisor in USDA’s Office of the Secretary and undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, will receive the award in the “Growing Organic Agriculture" category. The 2011 Organic Leadership Award recipients will be honored at the Sept. 21 OTA Awards Gala during OTA Member Day activities at Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD. Recipients will receive a hand-blown glass “planet’ by artist Josh Simpson.

Funk’s career began in the Sacramento Valley with a grassroots organic food business focused on helping the planet and promoting farmers’ use of less pesticides. Funk formed Mountain People’s Warehouse (MPW) in 1976, which combined with another regional distributor in 1996 to form UNFI. Under his guidance and leadership, UNFI and its subsidiaries have grown into an estimated $4.5 billion organization that employs more than 6,500 associates, and distributes approximately 60,000 products to over 23,000 customer locations. He actively supports the organic farming industry with grants, lobbying and outreach, and also is an involved member and supporter of OTA.

“Michael is truly committed to providing quality natural and organic products to consumers and is a tireless supporter of our industry," according to his nomination letter submitted by a UNFI colleague. “A long-time environmental advocate, his care and stewardship for the environment are evident in the way he lives his own life as well as passion about proactively reducing his carbon footprint… After many years of growing a successful business, he easily could have retired and enjoyed his good fortune, but instead, chooses every day to actively support, teach and inspire others."

Since 1983, Lipson has been a member of the Molino Creek Farming Collective in California, and at one time or another, has performed all the various roles of farm operations and management. In the mid-1980s he established the statewide office of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and became CCOF’s first paid employee. While there, he played a key role in the passage and implementation of the California Organic Foods Act of 1990 and the national Organic Foods Production Act. He was chairman of the California Organic Food Advisory Board from 1991 to 1997. He joined the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) in1995, and served as policy program director and senior policy analyst until 2010. In 1997 he authored the study “Searching for the O-Word," which documented the lack of USDA research support for organic farming systems. This work led to OFRF’s creation of the Scientific Congress for Organic Agricultural Research, a national network for producers and scientists pursing the science of organic production and markets. Lipson joined USDA in June 2010, and his responsibilities include cross-agency coordination of organic farming policy issues and assisting with the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative

 In his current position, “Mark impacts organic policy on a daily basis…Always with the organic farmers’ best interests in mind, Mark continues to impact the growing organic industry that he helped to create," according to his nomination letter submitted by Maureen Wilmot, executive director at OFRF.

Last year, Theresa Marquez of Organic Valley and Bob Quinn of Kamut® International received OTA’s Organic Leadership Awards.