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FRESNO — When Woody Deryckx got out of the U.S. Navy and into organic farming 30 years ago, most conventional farmers dismissed his efforts as an idealistic pipe dream better suited to hippie communes than modern commercial agriculture. 

“The kinds of innovations I was proselytizing about in the 1970s were totally rejected as being insane by the agricultural establishment,” Deryckx said. 

Now, there are about 6,600 certified organic farmers nationwide, with about 2,000 registered in California. Consumers, leery of pesticides and other contaminants, are spending about $3.5 billion a year on organic food. 

This week, Deryckx and about 100 other farmers, agricultural scientists and government officials from around the country are gathering in Pacific Grove to help their industry take the next step into the mainstream. 

They’ve come for the second meeting of the Scientific Congress on Organic Agricultural Research, a national organization developed with the help of farmers from around the country and researchers from Ohio State University, Iowa State University, North Carolina State University, Tufts University and the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz. 

“It’s an effort to begin writing a national organic research agenda. We need a blueprint; we need to say there must be more money ... this is how it should be spent,” OFRF director Bob Scowcroft said. 

“We’re starting a whole new movement of research, and the education that follows will support the growing movement of organic farming,” said Deryckx, a full-time organic potato and vegetable farmer in Malin, Ore., and president of OFRF. 

Last year marked a turning point of sorts for the nation’s organic farming industry. Organic growing techniques were codified in U.S. law as a “good farming practice” for the first time, allowing farmers who shun pesticides and other chemicals to be eligible for better crop insurance programs. 

Also, in December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture published national organic standards. Foods grown and processed according to the standards, a decade in development, will bear a seal of “USDA Organic.” 

“A lot of those methods we developed now are recognized as standard techniques,” said Deryckx, widely acknowledged by fellow organic farmers as being one of the industry’s most tenacious pioneers. 

Still, the bulk of research dollars is being spent on conventional farming studies. 

On Wednesday, OFRF will release a study of the organic research being done in the nation’s 67 land grant universities. Citing a 1997 OFRF study, the authors of “Organic Farming Systems Research and Land Grants 2000-2001” say that less than 0.1 percent of federal agricultural dollars were spent on organic farming research. 

Of the 886,000 acres of research land at universities nationwide, there are just 151 certified organic acres – and none in California, where about half the nation’s organic food is produced. 

“The land grant system’s institutionalized focus on purchased chemical inputs and mammoth-scale production marginalized many other areas of inquiry, including smaller-scale and more environmentally appropriate farming techniques,” the study says. 

In 1999, the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, which funds some organic research, received $8 million, or 2 percent, of the total of $402 million USDA spent on university research, according to the study. 

“We need to develop the 21st century ideal for organic systems research” and see that the ideal is fully funded, Scowcroft said. “There has to be organic research in every state of the union.” 

The consensus among most farmers and scientists is that organic research has to be taken as a whole system approach and has to be done on an organic farm. 

“You can’t understand an organic farm when you’re at a research station with a history of chemical abuse,” Deryckx said. 

An example of the type of research organic farmers want to see more of is being conducted at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems at North Carolina State University. 

Researchers there are studying organic crop systems over the long term, some non-chemical weed control methods and techniques to turn soil used for conventional farming into organic production. 

Scientists from several different disciplines, including entomologists, plant pathologists, soil scientists and horticulturists, are cooperating in research that evaluates the entire organic farm system, not just one or two pieces of the puzzle. 

“It’s very complicated. I think that’s why, in part, researchers have stayed away from organic in the past,” said Nancy Creamer, head of the organic unit in North Carolina State’s Department of Horticultural Science. 

Complaints about the meager resources dedicated to organic research nationwide don’t seem to come as much of a surprise to federal agriculture officials or university administrators, who tend to admit that organic farming research hasn’t been adequately funded. 

“That’s certainly one of the things organic farmers have advocated for a number of years,” said Keith Jones, program manager for the USDA National Organic Program, which was responsible for developing the national organic rules. 

Only in recent years have farmers and researchers been organizing in sufficient numbers to have an influential political voice, Jones said. 

Sean Swezey, director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program at the University of California, is more blunt. 

“(The funding) has not been enough,” Swezey said. 

The university has spent $1.3 million on 25 research projects since 1987 that have benefits for organic farmers. 

“There is tremendous interest in broadening the consumption of these organic products. We predict that in the next 25 years, as much as 20 percent of the total agricultural production in California will be organic.” 

That’s welcome news to the thousands of farmers who’ve dedicated themselves to the production of organic agriculture with a near-religious zeal. 

“Having been laughed at and ridiculed all these years, it’s astonishing to see it all come together now. But it’s just the beginning, we have a lot of work to do,” Deryckx said.