Farmers just amaze me. Their ability, knowledge, skills, metal and perserverance is astounding. Then throw on a dose of private interests mixed with local governement and you really find out what a farmer is made of when faced with the situation.
I have asked before and I ask one more time. Please follow this link and help save an organic farm from government and special interests. You will see the results of everyone's efforts, including yours. You have responded in the past and we ask one more time, this Wednesday, 11/16 at 10:45 am EST. please call. We can make a difference each and every one of us. If you cannot make it locally please set a reminder to call at that time or whenever. Tell them to save nicks organic farm.
This is about all of us, about ecology, farm land preservation, its about special interests manipulating politicians and the almighty dollar. More importantly it is our time and opportunity to help right a wrong. This is our time to stand up for the little guy.
How can you talk about sustainable farming and buying local for young children during a press event creating a "County Food Council" and at the same time try extinguishing one of the oldest organic farms in your county. Follow this link. It is possible and that is what is happening to Nick Maravell and the land he has farmed organically for over thirty years. Thirty-years. Think about that, organic farming did not exist, formally, in the USDA until 1990
Yet here is Nick, a visionary and pracitionar of what is good about farming and sustainable agriculture in general. However, we have elected officials that can say one thing and behind closed doors do another. This is fact, not me spouting off because I am ranting about the ills of government and special interests. A private soccer entity, profited significantly last year from county taxpayers.Now they want to rent land from the taxpayers, and then charge the taxpayers to use the land. Not to mention take land that has been organic for thirty years and turn it into a chemical dump or what is known as the modern day soccer field. Did I mention the community does not want the fields and it would be a great resource to educate our young about sustainable farming and environmental sensativity?
That is what we are faced with, teaching the young about farming from a man that has dedicated his life in pursuit of the ideas and stewardship of the land or let another corporation push ahead of the common good for the profit of a few.Go figure.
Please help, read about the update, help fight for the small farm and the family that owns, works and lives the life.
Folks, help save Nick's organic farm in Potomac Maryland. The local goverment is trying to take over land that Nick has farmed organically for over thirty years. Why you ask? Because a lobbyist was hired by a private corporation that wants to build soccer fields for a community that does not need or want them. Please visit Nick's link to find out more and how to help.
He needs donations, letters to local officals and most importantly support in any form. Sunday 8/21 we will be at the Brickyard Road site cooking our free range chickens and Nick's organic beef, in order to continue to promote community awarness of this gross abuse of scarce ecological resources. Thirty years of organic care to be turned over to private concerns that will use chemicals to maintain these same fields.
At first. some people flinch when they hear the price of our eggs. Even when compaired to local organic eggs the price is still high. However, it cost us four dollars and fifty-four cents to produce one dozen eggs. We are small and do not have the economies of scale that would help keep cost down and allow us to be price competative. How we raise and treat our layers is not conventional but more in synergy with a balanced eco-system for soil health, pest management, fruit and vegetable production and environmental sustainability.
Organic Hairy Vetch seed, when we first started buying it in fifty-pound bags, cost twenty-eight dollars. That was four years ago, today that same fifty-pound bag costs one hundred and twenty dollars. Organic winter rye has gone up about forty percent. Organic chicken feed cost fifteen dollars for fifty pounds, now it is twenty dollars for the same fifty pounds. Diesel prices went up and never came down as well as, everything else that we need that is delivered to us, via freight or is made from petrol derivatives.
Add insurance costs, fees for certification and licenses, egg cartons, labels, boxes for bulk delivery and more. You need a license to sell eggs; the eggs must be weighed, dated, and graded. The scale you use to weigh the eggs needs a license and is inspected. We need to document how many eggs are layed each day, any bird losses or gains per year and we are suffering losses again. We think it is a neighbor's dog. Under State and County law I am allowed to shoot the dog and still go after the owner for economic losses. Here is one of those philisophical mores being tested against the almighty dollar. I will have to explore this one later.
Each chicken cost about one dollar as a day old peep. Because they will be organic, you need to spend the first three weeks of their life keeping them from getting Coccidiosis. Until that time, their immune system is under-developed and cannot protect themselves from their own fecal matter. This labor and all labor associated with their daily and long term maintenance is charged at eight dollars an hour.
Next is tilling and preparing plots of land for the chickens’ new home. This is a year round function, below is a piece of land that was used to grow corn in 2009. We tilled and what you are seeing is hairy vetch, some winter rye and some brown leaves.
We will move the chickens onto this field eight feet at a time. The electric fence gets moved, then the chicken house winter set up and all goes with it. This brings me to another cost, electricity for heating the water buckets and a heat lamp when temperatures drop below freezing. Another interesting note is that the land that has hairy vetch and rye freezes last. When we move the fence, each post has a spike to go into the ground. If you are outside the perimeter of the seed mix, the ground is frozen solid and impenetrable. A few inches into the mix and the spike goes in no problem. Eventually even the best grass is frozen solid but until it does, we use the fence when moving the pens.
What you see below is the soil after the chickens have been on and moved off. It looks bad to the untrained eye, but what you are seeing is some of the greatest naturally developed soil a farm could ask to have. The layers eat the vetch, a legume, and the rye, which in turn affects the taste of the egg. At least that is what we think our customers are talking about when they say, "These are the best eggs we've ever had". A humbling statement that makes me blush but the fact they are repeat customers is what really confinced us to stick with this particular production model.
The ground is fertile, devoid of weeds, most subterranean and low flying insects, good and bad are gone, and there is a natural tilth and humus. The ground is soft and on relatively flat land. Other parts of the farm we change the model a little bit in order to stop soil erosion.
The layers eat all the grasses, scratch up the soil and leave nutrients behind. At the top right of the picture is our Rooster and two-three of his companions. In the spring I will come again, surface till and lay down hairy vetch. red clover and rye. If need be we can put chickens back on it but we have other areas that need attention too.
This is a cyclical process; we plant vegetables, and then let the soil rest by planting nitrogen fixing grasses and winter rye that develops a deep taproot making the soil expand. The layers are moved on, and then off to another plot of lush fresh green garden. We then use the land that has been resting the longest to grow the season's vegetables. While the other three pieces of land are naturally recouperaring the nutrients and minerals helps us reduce our fertilizer needs.
Then there are the costs associated with medical supplies to take care of wounds and do examinations. It is not much but it is a cost.
After most all of the costs are added up for the month we then take the total dozen count and come up with our revenue. Our last calculation came out to $4.54 a dozen. When laying production drops, there are fewer eggs to sell and that cost number rises. You still have the same amount of layers eating the same amount of food; you just have less revenue potential that makes the loss greater. Did I mention that I graduated from business school? I have said we are in it for the health but I even wonder if I need to get a check up from the neck up.
I wake up at six in the morning. If it is a weekday, I get up, let the chickens out, and go to the profession that pays for the ability to grow vegetables, fruits, eggs, grasses, implement soil rejuvenation techniques and integrated pest and nutrient management practices. When we get home, we put in about two and half hours on farm related activity. This ranges from hand watering to using the drip tape, weeding, assessing the environment, looking for signs of anything that is not right with the animals, vegetables and high tunnel. Then address whatever the situation, pests, weeds, watering, feeding, isolating sick chickens and then evaluating them, you get the idea. If it is the weekend, I get an hour to rest and relax before the work starts at seven.
The weekend workday starts with doing the most physical task right away before the days heat kicks in. Then the next hardest task and then the next hardest physical task, interspersed with breaks for hydration and back to the next most physical task. As you are doing the tasks, the temperature is rising and the humidity is reaching into the eighties and nineties. Your body is fighting the heat by perspiring, which leads to your eyes stinging from the salty water. You stay hydrated in order to maintain fluid levels and maintain stamina.
Because we grow mainly vegetables and fruits all work is done outdoors and during some of the hottest parts of the day. It is a grind but work takes place in order for the plants to produce. If we are not hand weeding an acre and a half of gardens, we are moving the chickens and their fences, or collecting eggs, we are tracking insects, and trying to protect what is in the ground from the flora and fauna. We are planting or watering, or cleaning out the chicken trailer and checking for lice and any indication of an anomaly, or watering and feeding the chickens, laying drip tape, setting up new irrigation, or mowing the fields and the grass, or harvesting produce, or checking on broody chickens or sick chickens. Saturdays we harvest early because we are delivering to our retail markets. We give tours so some days I have to turn the staff lose to work on their own chores while I walk groups around explaining what and why sustainable farming practices are needed and justified.
Sunday we attend the one farmers market we can make. The day starts with harvesting everything that is ready to sell and feed the chickens the ugly stuff not good enough for sale. This farmers market happens to be on asphalt and starts at twelve noon. By the time, you get there and setup the tarmac has had a couple hours to heat up so you have to take precautions with your produce, the same produce picked that morning. You are always outside and at the mercy of the weather, rain or shine, you are sweating, you need sun/rain protection and at times bug protection. You work until you no longer have the stamina or the sunlight whichever comes first. You eat, sleep and repeat.
Along with the physical aspects of growing, you have educational pursuits in order to learn what bugs are beneficial and which are detrimental, what viruses and bacteria are present and what combats them. You learn about different soil types; reading soil analysis charts for nutrient levels, familiarize yourself with the Ph levels for different fruits and vegetables grown and that nitrogen-fixers help the soil fertility. You find out about crop rotation, green manures, nematodes, and rhizomes and cover cropping. There is the learning curve that has spanned generations in farming families, but you have to pick them up in an extraordinarily short period in order to be successful. You will spend years reading and learning from every mistake you make and you will make mistakes, they will be innocent at first and may be overlooked until they take crops from you and you find there is no hope of recouping even basic expenses associated with the crop, forget profit. This year it was using “Winter Rye” as a cover crop for our corn. We found out why Winter Rye is such a good green manure too. Winter Rye when it gets to a certain stage sends out particles that stop the germination of other plants, thus helping itself propagate and survive. Another problem or benefit, depending on how you use it, is its capacity to get to water. This is great if you are trying to rid the field of weeds. It is not so great when the sweet corn you planted is not pollinating properly and you are facing drought situations. If you cannot harvest it, you are not going to be able to generate revenue.
I think the people with animals have it worse, we are still learning how to take care of chickens and we are in our fourth year. Animal husbandry is a discipline unto itself. Each animal has its own problems and although some might be the same between species, most animals have specific issues to deal with. Chickens have Coccidiosis when they are day-olds and H1:N5 (avian flu), cows have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) goats and sheep have Johnnie’s (pronounced Yonies), they all have some virus or bacteria that is prevalent in their species that they are susceptible to. You have to know this in order to keep everything healthy, growing and vigorous. Feeding animals is another issue that needs attention. In the chicken world layers, get a different feed than broilers (meat birds). One major difference is the calcium requirement, layers get it broilers do not. Then there is first level medical care. You need to learn how to assess the condition of the animal and what precautions or protocols to administer. Is it something a vet should address? You have to decide to cull the animal or choose to nurse the animal back to health. If you choose, the latter you will need more in depth knowledge.
What we love most about all this are the people that cheer you on, caringly give you their time and expertise and champion your actions. We do optimistic planning based in reality, so we plan contingencies. It seems daunting when you read all that needs accomplishing in a day, a week, a month and a year. It is doable, remember not to long ago we were an agrarian society it was not the easiest life and it still is not, then again nothing good ever came from something easy.
Buy Local:Feed yourself safely and support your community
We need water. When we moved on to the farm in August of 2002, the eastern seaboard was in the midst of a drought. One similar to the one we are under now and our crops are showing wear. It makes sense that we are in a drought, because I just added (this spring) the capacity to collect six thousand more gallons of rainwater. This brings our ability to collect a total of twelve thousand gallons.
This year we connected the tanks earlier than normal to collect water. I had the tanks hooked up by March ready for the first rain or snowmelt. In previous years, the tanks would be over flowing by July, which is why we bought more tanks. There have been years past when we had to dump thousands of gallons of collected rainwater at the end of the season to winterize the tanks.
We are also using drip tape with the openings spaced every twelve inches, which is how far we spaced our plants. Give or take an additional twelve inches. We have been able to conserve water use and precisely apply water to the vegetables. Yet, we still need water. We never did get a full twelve thousand gallons. As of the last precipitation, the total collected for this spring was six thousand gallons. Since then we have been watering weekly in an attempt to conserve water.
We need the corn to get deep taproots so we have to water them slowly and for long periods. Corn is a heavy feeder on the soil and the water table; the deeper their roots go the better the corn. Our backup plan has always been to pump water out of the stream that runs through our property. This increases our carbon footprint but is something that will need consideration if we do not get rain soon. With drip irrigation at least we can almost micro-manage water distribution.
Nothing on a farm is easy and that includes irrigation systems. Ours’ uses drip tape, which is a vast improvement over soaker hoses or overhead watering. Not only does it conserve water, you lose less water to evaporation and those plants that need pollination stand a better chance of getting pollen when it is dry and a breeze comes along.
It is not easy running drip tape thousands of feet and having three different zones to keep track of, but collected rainwater is a precious commodity and we treat it as such.
No surprise, watering has great affects on the look of the fruit and vegetable. Just like humans, plants can go for a time without food, but without water, they expire. With tomatoes if you water inconsistently it will develop cat facing and blossom end rot. Too much water and you can split the tomato. Therefore, being steady and consistent with all tomatoes gets them into a pattern they can live with. Trimming them has also been a way for us to increase yields and help the plant through drier then normal times. Less leaves means water intake can be reserved for the important parts, the tomato.
Our theory is to get rid of most of the leaf structure that does not support fruit bearing branches. This way the plant has more nutrients available to send to the fruits instead of feeding unnecessary branches and leaves. There is a point of no return so trimming needs the utmost care and discretion. I guess we could have spent thousands getting a well put in but it seemed like a better idea to capture free water falling from the sky. I have not regretted the decision but we do need rain.
We ran totally out of water and ordered four thousand gallons of water Friday. I told the farmer who went in on buying this year’s tanks and he thanked me profusely. “Why?” I asked, “Because we will get rain now.” “Oh wise one,” I said, “That is why I only purchased four thousand so I would have space to collect the rain that I was bringing”. Moreover, yes he was right, Saturday morning it rained and we got four tenths of an inch. Not much, but when you need rain you will take what ever you can get.
Buy Local: Support your local farmer, your community and your health.
We got our first complaint this week. Actually, from the sound of it, it was at least three complaints. We have had things rejected before by retailers because they were expecting heads of lettuce and we brought bunches. Never have we had vegetables returned or complaints after purchase. We did have one person complain about worms in her corn the first year we grew corn. I explained that we did not use sprays or chemicals and gave her six free ears that week. In four years of growing certified organic veggies and fruits, we have not had a complaint. Being organic there is a procedure to follow and documentation to create when we do get a complaint. It is something that needs to be recorded and produced during the organic audit. Even if that requirement were not in place, we would still address the situation and make it right.
Therefore, it was a surprise to us when we got notice that there were too many holes and slugs in our mesclun mix. We do not wash our mix because it hurts more than it helps. After a rain, it is too dirty and we do wash it but the tender leaves can break, washing adds time and expenses to the process.
When it comes to amendments, referred to as organic herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, in liquid and powder forms, we tend to shy away from their application. First off, they are not that effective unless you spray often and almost daily. Secondly, it is expensive to do it that way. We rely on integrated pest management techniques like trap crops, purchasing beneficial bugs and nematodes, physical barriers such as floating row covers and glue traps. Sometimes they do not stop infestations but they do work better when compared to doing nothing.
Take for instance our Mesclun mix. It has gotten a lot of holes, pinholes, but holes no matter. Funny thing is I think it actually helps hold more dressing but that is a different point. Most importantly, the taste is not affected and the safety of the vegetable is unsurpassed. I would stand tissue samples of our mix up against any other for comparative analysis of foreign substances. However, looks count and we were on the losing end of that equation.
From a culinary standpoint the Chinese learned thousands of years ago that we eat with our eyes first. That is why classically trained Chinese chefs prepare the most fantastic looking dishes. Some of the dishes, I have seen, could pass as art they are so beautiful. From garnishes to actual dishes, Chinese cuisine is just stunning, which brings me to our dilemma.
Organic fruits and vegetables sometimes are not pretty. Look at some heirloom tomatoes, they have some funky looking shapes and sizes, but the taste of those ugly things are unequalled. Our mix had tiny holes in them but they had nothing sprayed on them and they tasted good. As consumers’ we have learned that if, the fruit or vegetable does not look aesthetically pleasing we pass it by.
Look at tomatoes, the IFC (Industrial Food Complex) has engineered tomatoes such that they grow almost perfectly round, withstand shipping long distances and have longer shelf lives. I do not know of a single person that would pick a store bought tomato over a home grown or local one when it is identified as such. Of all the people, we meet and talk to when you ask that one question, no one has ever said they prefer the store bought tomato. Yet, if you let that same person chose between the two tomatoes without them knowing which one is local, most times they will pick the one that looks better. It is how we have been conditioned.
It is a hard sell when the look of the fruit or vegetable is not perfect. When we give tours, whatever is in season we usually stop there and I will let people eat what it is. The first thing I do is pick it and eat it. Then I explain why I can do that here as opposed to doing the same thing in the clean environment of a grocery store. Most people would never eat something directly out of the ground (I would not have in the past). This too has been drilled into us, that we must wash our food before eating. Moreover, given the illnesses and worse, which occur, from the IFC, this is a good safe practice. You just cannot wash off the trace amounts of carcinogenic chemicals used in its production. Now if there has been a recent rain we do need to wash the soil off, but for the most part we eat it right out of the ground. I want people to learn that our food has nothing on it, that you can pull it out of the ground and eat it there with no ill affect, short or long term
Besides, the taste of what they are eating usually blows them away. It is the freshest vegetables most of them have ever tasted. They learn that yes, there are imperfections but the look quickly is dismissed by the flavor their palates are experiencing. Looks will be an uphill battle for us however, it is more important that the vegetables and fruits we sell are the safest, freshest and tastiest then the prettiest.
Our goal is not looks but health. The health of our customers, ourselves, our animals, the precious resources we use and the environment we inhabit. Besides, in many ways looks are deceiving.
Buy Local: Try ugly sometime, remember you cannot judge a book by its cover.
There was a study recently linking Atrazine to the castration and feminization of frogs in test labs. Atrazine is used primarially in weed control applications by industrial farms and other large operations. The San Fransico Chronicle wrote about the affects that Atrizine is having on the environment. The study was conducted at UC Berkley and is being published in the "Proceddings of the National Academy of Sciences".
As you would expect the maker of the weed suprresant is fighting the study and pointing to every flaw they can find. Interestingly, the author of the study worked for the maker years before but was dismissed when his findings showed Atrazine to be a possible endocrine disruptor. Remember our feminized bass, they are a prime example of what an endocrine disruptor can do.
The endocrine system regulates hormones like testostorone and estrogen. Any wonder the frogs are becoming feminized and worse castrated by levels of Atrazine? I can't make this stuff up, yet we sit blindly by while trace amounts of chemicals are allowed in our food supply. Relying on scientific data that at best is funded from special interests.
Am I missing something, is it that we'll die off and be replaced by other spenders and that is why killing us to make a profit is okay. I know the Supreme Court rules for the Corporations not for the individuals. Look at their decisions over years. The majority of decisions are against the common man. Why would we expect the FDA to crack down on the use of endocrine disruptors. Things have to get out of control like Thalidimide, DDT, Bisphenol A (plastsic containers) and Phthalates(cosmetics), before we are protected from those that seek profit no matter the outcome.
If this is happening to the frogs then what is happening to the humans that have to work around the stuff and ingest trace amounts. Besides that what is the shelf life of this stuff? My bet is you just can't wash it away. If you could then it wouldn't be affective in the rain and you can't have that. It has to be able to withstand water in order to be affective in the field right?.
Twenty years ago we started growing organic because I didn't like all the chemicals being used. Relatively speaking it was benign back then compared to what todays consumers are facing. God help us all, because no one in charge seems to care enough to stop the chemical jugrnuat.
Buy Local- Save a frog, a bass and your own environment by doing so
The first flock was seventeen weeks old, their were six of them all layers. One of the first things we learned was that you did not need a rooster in order to get eggs from a hen. After hearing stories of insane and attack roosters, having hens was just fine by us. We had gotten comfortable with cover cropping, field rotation and mixing grasses and legumes for the chickens to forage. Family and friends truly liked the taste of the eggs so we felt we were ready to expand.
When you get hens as day old chicks they are suppose to be hens. Because we didn't know any better we expected that we would get hens when we ordered a total of fifteen one day old hens. I had seen how they sex chicks (determine male or female) and some chicks are known to be hens based on their color (sexlinks). We have Rhode Island Reds and apparently they are not as easy to sex as one thinks. We didn't know this but found out later with on the job training.
We got flock two, fifteen, day old chicks, and raised them organically. We moved them out to the barn when they were four weeks old. They had feathers but we put a heat lamp out just the same. We had started to build a moveable pen so we were in the barn a lot that spring. As the chicks grew I started noticing one that was bigger than the rest. I didn't pay much attention to it until it started sounding different then the others.
I know why city people are made fun of in rural areas. Here is a primary example of why we as urban dwellers are looked upon with a degree of skepticism from our rural neighbors. I called the farm store and asked about our recent chicken order. "Did we get a rooster with the hens"? I asked. "No, probably not" was the answer then followed by "we can't guarantee all hens at sale but probably not". So I described the chicken that was more developed then the rest and said that it sounds like it is trying to crow. "Yep," she said you got a rooster.
Without even thinking when she said it was a rooster I blurted out a question that, as the words were forming and audiblizing, I knew was the dumbest question a supposed farmer could ask. There are two things you can do with a rooster on a farm. One is to eat him. The other is to let him fertilize the eggs. That's it; those are the only things roosters can do on a farm. A male chicken has two functions on a farm he is food or Don Juan for the ladies.
Of course I knew this, but I was forming the question, and the sales clerk on the other end was hearing it, and I couldn't stop myself. When she told me it was a rooster I was dumb founded "What am I going to do with a rooster," I blurted out mindlessly. There was dead silence on the other end of the phone line or maybe muffled laughter I don't remember. What I do remember is questioning why I had just asked such a simple question. She composed herself enough to say that indeed we could eat it or we could you use it for its reproductive capability. Neither of which we wanted or planned for so I ended the conversation quickly. So the damage was done, at least I hadn't given her my name
We never wanted a rooster, we are not at the processing stage and we didn’t want to hatch chicks either. With our luck if we hatched chicks we’d get more males then females. Rooster weren’t a thought until we started seeing and hearing the signs. By that time it is too late, it is yours. We tried to sell it, then offered to give it away but had no takers. Over time we have found that there is a third function a rooster can serve and that is ambience, our customers like to hear it crow and often comment on him. They get to see a beautiful Rhode Island Red in all his plumage and in full throat. Of course I've learned the mating signs so I'm not caught off guard when he's in the mood and we happen to have parents and children watching.
So the Rooster lives on with a run of the yard and hens to keep him company and protect. So far their have been no signs of insanity, delusions of grandeur or unprovoked attacking. Oh, and the rooster is ok too.
Buy Local - From a farmer not from a chain hard selling the word
"Organic food is too expensive, there is no difference in the vitamins and minerals when compared to conventionally grown food and conventionally grown food looks better than its organic counter-part. Conventional food is unblemished, big, colorful and robust. You can't feed all the people in the world using organic and sustainable practices it is just not feasible. Huge monolithic conventional farms must continue to flourish if we as a civilization will be fed."
These are the arguments that the Industrial Food Complex (IFC) and their huge propaganda machine would have you believe. What scares me the most is that there is a large segment of our population that actually believes it. What is wrong here is that we are being bombarded with tainted studies and while I'm at it, tainted food. But who do we think we are, as consumers, to ask for a safe, fresh, chemical residue free, non-genetically modified food supply? Whatever were we thinking, who cares what resources are left for future generations as long as the IFC were able to profit from the environment's very demise today? What if we now have feminized striped bass in our water-ways? The fish is still good to eat, be it male or female, right?
We have what is called concentrated animal farm operations (CAFO's), where the living conditions of the animals are so deplorable they have to pump the animals full of hormones, antibiotics and other synthetic substances on a regular basis just to keep them eating. Then there is the waste from all these animals. Waste that contains the antibiotics and hormones that they've been fed. Where does the waste go from a CAFO? Let's say they are ninety-nine percent efficient at capturing all waste generated. It’s probably less, but I don't know for sure, so to be on the generous side let's say one percent gets out and pollutes the water table. One percent and our striped bass are being feminized.
I swear I have a vein popping out on my forehead as I read this stuff. Sometimes I see why Lewis Black's whole body is trembling as he talks to his audience about the illogical. There is a misconception that sustainable and organic practices aren't feasible and practical. It seems that perception is based on profit capability, not the benefit to the environment and our future generations. How much profit is enough and to what peril?
But I digress; I want to parse the first paragraph in order to give the other side of the argument. Organic food is too expensive. Studies suggest that when you look at the true cost of conventional production and shipping (the carbon footprint, labor, overhead, seed cost, transportation), unsustainable practices and the cost of fixing the environment from CAFO's and other huge conventional farm practices, organic food is cheaper. We ask customers where they live so we can tell them of local farms in their area so they don't have to drive as far.
It is important to note that local food grown conventionally is going to have far less chemicals and is healthier to eat. When was the last time you heard of a local vegetable recall or contamination compared to that of IFC's. Look at the decision making criteria of the two; a local farmer has his or her family to feed and bases their decision making with that in mind. For their food the local farmer eats what they produce. An executive in the IFC has his or her family to feed too. If they don't make a profit, they will not have a job in which to pay for the food their family needs (at least that’s how it used to be. It seems now you can lose billions and get paid millions.) An example of profit driven management decision making would be the peanut butter recall. The company had tests done years before that showed contamination. What did management do? I don't really know, what is known is that they didn't get rid of the problem and all of this was exposed because consumers got sick. Do you think those managers ate any of their own product knowing they had already identified contamination?
University of California Berkley research found that organic practices raised vitamin and mineral rates twenty-five percent over conventional counterparts (see the CNN health link on our blog page). Search the net and you will find articles supporting both sides of that argument. But it seems to me that most of the articles against organics are not coming from academia but private entities. But I'm jaded. I look at things from a logical, common sense stand point. For argument sake, let’s say every thing is equal between organic and conventional vegetables, except the chemical residue on the outside and inside of the vegetables. This much is fact; research shows that there are trace amounts of chemical residue on and in vegetables. Allowable trace amounts per regulations.
Trace residues of chemicals known to be carcinogenic are found on conventional vegetables. If there is a trace doesn't that mean the existence or presence of? Take microwave popcorn. As early as 1993 policy makers knew that Diacetyl causes lung cancer. Diacetyl was one of the chemicals in the butter flavoring of microwave popcorn. So in their opinion workers in the production of microwave popcorn had to wear protective breathing gear due to the hazard. But the general public, supposedly, were not at risk. Fast forward to 2008 and they find that a man who ate two bags a day for ten years has developed lung cancer caused by Diacetyl. To me that suggests that trace amounts add up. We are human which makes us prone to mistakes. Why don't we err on the side of caution and ban trace amounts totally?
People will mention studies done by scientist as an argument for trace amounts and point to the relative safety of these trace amounts. The monetary motivations of the few often contradict the safety of the masses. Case in point the medical journals in the 1900s supported smoking for years as a way to raise their revenue. To be fair these journals no longer support nor accept advertising dollars from big tobacco. My point is with enough money you can pay for a study that promotes your cause. You have to spend money in order to make money, isn't that how the adage goes?
Conventional food looks perfect, thanks to manmade chemicals that not only protect it from other Nature but from its own natural demise. The shelf lives are longer and they can be transported further distances. But then again there are those darn trace chemicals on the outside and inside of vegetables. Let's look at safety; we know for a fact striped bass are becoming feminized and tests are pointing towards hormones in the water table. God knows what other things are going on but you can bet feminized bass are not the only thing. Has anyone gotten sick and died from organic spinach? They did from conventional spinach from the IFC.
Organic vegetables don't have trace amounts of chemicals and are safer to eat. Next up is freshness and taste of conventionally grown food. Please, it has neither. Look internally, take taste for instance. Everything else being equal, when given a blind taste test more people will chose organic over conventional. Which is better, a store bought tomato or one purchased from a local farmer? Organic vegetables struggle to get nutrients out of the ground. Nietzsche said "that which does not kill us serves to make us stronger". I believe as others have written that a vegetable that struggles to get its nutrients out of the ground, versus those just sprayed with synthetic nutrients, will taste better. Plus no trace chemicals on organic veggies. Try it for yourself - get organic or local vegetables from a local farm and some from the supermarket. Cook them identically and take a blind taste test and see for yourself.
You can't feed all the people in the world using organic/sustainable agriculture. We did back in the early 1900's before chemicals were introduced. Research has advanced organic methods even further today. My comment to that argument- People are starving to death right now. The only thing the IFC guarantees is if you have the money you can eat.
I understand the use of propaganda, misinformation and down right misleading of information and facts. That is why one of the most important jobs local farmers have is the dissemination of information. It’s educating people about the dangers and more importantly the alternatives and what consumers can do about it. People say organic is bad because the business model is not designed around profit. It is designed around the health, welfare and sustainability of human beings and the ecology. Personally I do not have a problem with that.
Buy Local - From a farmer not a chain hard selling that fact.
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This year we connected the tanks earlier than normal to collect water. I had the tanks hooked up by March ready for the first rain or snowmelt. In previous years, the tanks would be over flowing by July, which is why we bought more tanks. There have been years past when we had to dump thousands of gallons of collected rainwater at the end of the season to winterize the tanks.
