Glenn Cunningham Story of the Year - 2023

Bart Pfankuch, South Dakota News Watch

Judge’s Comments: Bart Pfankuch’s story about organic food is so readable you can taste it. The South Dakota author serves an abundance of flavors, focusing first on an ardent Sioux Falls organic foods customer who’d pay extra for organic foods before paying his own rent, also on an equally devoted farmer determined to achieve a new super certification (called Real Organic Project). He reports broadly about the faith most organic farmers, regulators, marketers, and customers have in the USDA Organic program, the country’s regulatory fights between organic advocates and detractors, the challenges to protecting the program’s credibility, how the program has abandoned traditional organic principles in some ways, along with a few cases of huge, appallingly fraudulent sales on nonorganic commodities as organic. This is a beautifully balanced, informative, and enjoyable read.

Bart Pfankuch, South Dakota News Watch

Fraud and weak USDA oversight chip away at integrity of organic food industry – 8/3/2022

—   (Sidebar) Fraudulent farmers live lavishly until caught

Judge’s comments: I enjoyed the conversational, easy-to-read style that the author maintained throughout both articles. I saw no evidence that the author assumed prior knowledge of the reader but was intentional in informing the reader about the issue and used relevant examples to demonstrate how current agricultural systems function to provide context to the issue of focus, as it continues to emerge. The author was able to hold my attention with a topic that transcends local geography but grounded the issue in personal stories that still made the topic relatable.