The Organic Farmers Association is happy the U.S. Department of Agriculture took action to terminate the rulemaking process to establish a mandatory national research and promotion program for organic. The proposed program was causing divisions 
among the organic community. Checkoff programs must have the support of an entire industry to be implemented, which this didn’t have.
The proposed Organic Research and Promotion Program would have required all certified organic operations, even those exempted from the checkoff, to submit annual gross sales reports. All entities whose gross sales exceeded $250,000 a year would have been legally required to pay .0001 percent of their annual organic sales.
Jennifer Taylor, Vice President of the OFA, says, “Organic farmers already fulfill a heavy load of paperwork for their annual organic certification. Additional federally-mandated paperwork would have been overly burdensome, especially for the 75 percent of certified organic farmers who would have been exempt from the checkoff.”
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.