Successful experience and policy inspirations of organic agriculture in the Unite States from the perspective of green development of agriculture

The development of organic agriculture is conducive to restoring the ecological balance; it is also important in improving the quality and safety of agricultural products, realizing the green development of agriculture, and comprehensively promoting rural revitalization in China. To achieve the overall sustainable development of agriculture, the United States began organic agriculture development in the 1940s. After more than 80 years, some progress has been made, notably in six areas: production, market sales, trade interaction, standard certification management, financial subsidies, and scientific research. The main experience of United States organic agriculture includes improving agricultural legislation to build the legal basis of sustainable agricultural development, implementing organic agriculture assistance projects through financial subsidies to reduce production costs during organic conversion, and encouraging farmers to choose organic agriculture. In addition, innovations in organic technology and improvements in organic scientific research are critical to the industry. At the same time, the international certification and recognition of organic standards have been actively promoted, the world’s first market scale has been created, and the internationalization level of organic agriculture has been improved. However, organic agriculture in the United States is still a small industry under the national agricultural layout, especially regarding the area of organic agricultural land. Moreover, the number of organic farms accounts for a low proportion in the whole country, and their distribution in various states is uneven. For instance, the scale of organic farmland and the number of organic farms in the West, Midwest, and Northeast are clearly better than those in the South. Meanwhile, there is also an imbalance in the import and export trade structures of organic agricultural products. Therefore, under the data analysis and literature review, this paper believes that there are three main reasons for the above problems in the United States: the high operating cost of organic agriculture, the weak competitive advantage of organic agricultural products, and the limited technical support and financial investment. Based on these outcomes, the following suggestions are put forward for the high-quality development of organic agriculture in China: first, cultivating new organic agriculture business organizations and broadening the marketing channels of organic products; second, establishing the top-level design concept and building an accurate policy support system; third, promoting organic agriculture legislation, strengthening scientific research investment and technological innovation, and improving the organic certification system and promoting international certification and accreditation actively.