Troll This

[Paul Pless]

My sister owns an organic farm. Another organic farmer traded her a bunch (like 100 lbs of different types of organic olives). So far my favorites are the big greene Spanish olives stuffed with jalepeno peppers. If I'm not careful I going to die of an olive overdose soon. :D

Incidentally, organic farming seems like a good place to invest money right now. My sister tells me large organic watermelons are retailing for $15.00 - $20.00 a pop. Wow!

[km gresham]

I never buy organic. I suspect that many of the items come out of the same garden as the other stuff, they just call it organic and multiply the price by 10. ;)

[Bruce G]

Originally posted by Paul Pless:
big greene Spanish olives stuffed with jalepeno peppers. Ah yes, we always keep 2 jars of these on hand at all times!!!!!

[Paul Pless]

You should try it sometime. There really is a difference. You can tell not just by the taste, but by the look and feel. Most, at least for now, organic farmers are relatively small and they treat what they are doing as a craft. They care that they are producing the finest produce. My sister grows certified organic grains, most years soy, but sometimes other grains. Hard to tell the difference in an organic soybean and a normal one. But some of her freinds in the industry are orange growers and others grow vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers. The difference is huge.

She has been part of an organic industry association for many years that certifies her product. Now that the USDA is involved it should be even easier to feel confident you are getting what is labeled.

[Jack Heinlen]

There really is a difference. One of the things that we are finding out, and it will continued to be ignored because, largely, of money interests, is that plants grown in naturally fertilized ground yield superior fruit.

It is not just about nitrogen, phosphorus and...what's that third one? There is a connection to soil, to the subtle energies of the earth.

Modern agriculture has created a boom in population, a reasonable standard of nutrition for most, but it will be proved wrong on certain fundamental.

[ 05-19-2004, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[Chris Coose]

I never buy organic. I suspect that many of the items come out of the same garden as the other stuff, they just call it organic and multiply the price by 10. I've owned a small organic farm and greenhouse business since 1975. My son now farms and operates the business.

The Maine Organic Farmers & Gardner's Association began to certify farms about that time. The standards were very strict to qualify.
In an effort to make the standards universal, the current Dept. of Agriculture softened the requirements quite a bit but not anywhere to the point where one food was like the other.
Naturally there was an effort on the part of big agriculture to strip the requirements totally.

Organic labeling should indicate a much higher quality food without the use of chemicals.

This administration has cut inspectors to practically nil so you would be correct to be skeptical.

On the other hand the array of chemicals used by big farms does amount to poison and that's surely what you get if you choose standard off the shelf.

If you come to Maine and buy at farmer's market and the farmer is organic, you can be certain that MOFGA standards apply. The cost is never 10x's as much.

If you get to Bar Harbor do not stop by Town Hill Green's stand, Adrian's produce is all organic and you may not recognise the product.

You are what you eat.

[Donn]

"It is not just about nitrogen, phosphorus and...what's that third one? " NPK = Nitrogen, Phosphates and Potassium (K).

[Bigrock]

You are what you eat Well said Mr Coose.

[km gresham]

Don't get your knickers in a bunch - I was teasing (note the ;) )

Actually I have bought a couple of things labeled "organic" and they're good quality. I don't have a burning desire to buy all organic as some of my friends do, but when it suits the purpose and is resonably priced (for a family of 5 that's important) I buy it. Mostly lettuce and other greens.

[Phil Young]

I might get this a bit muddled, on account of I forget things a bit. And don't pay much attention to what I hear on the radio. But I think I heard on the radio the other day a discussion to the effect that organic foods are better for you, because in the abscence of pesticides etc, they contain their own natural nasties, which then work in you to keep various illnesses at bay. Does that make any sense?

[Lucky Luke]

Originally posted by Chris Coose:
[QUOTE] You are what you eat.:eek: Oh, then I am a huge big lettuce mixed with shrimp and sliced salmon, and spring rolls on the side smile.gif
Happily, we are not what we drink, no?....well...I hope tongue.gif

[huisjen]

I've met some organic farmers who go up in arms at the suggestion that the new rules are bad, for the reason that you now have to be certified to call it organic. "Boy Scout Organic", swearing it is with your fingers crossed on the other hand behind your back and a tank full of spray waiting in the shed, is no longer as common. But I wouldn't say swapping non-organic for organic doesn't exist either.

I think there may be some truth to Karen's joke. How do you grow organic bananas? It's still a monoculture planted in a rainforest clearcut. How can you call lettuce from California organic if it's shipped across the country?

One of the central ideas behind organic is that it's going to be grown in an ecologically and socially sustainable manner. I don't think "organic" strawberries picked by sub-minimum wage migrant workers and shipped thousands of miles count.

So when you shop, don't just ask if it's organic. Ask where it's from too. Know your farmer.

Of course I still buy the organic bananas anyway...

Dan

[ 05-20-2004, 11:29 AM: Message edited by: huisjen ]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

That's a very good point, Huisjen.

In British supermarkets (a business in which we claim to lead the world, but our home teams were sufficiently scared when WalMart bought a chain here...) the proportion of non-UK-grown "organic" crops is rather high. British organic farmers complain, but are met with the response that Britain does not grow strawberries in February!

I do agree that something grown on the other side of the planet, picked using underpaid labour and flown half across the world is not, in any meaningful sense, "organic".

I reckon I can easily taste the difference in eggs and meat, less easily with bread and vegetables, and with milk frankly I cannot. But we still buy organic, as much as we can, because we have two children to think of.

[huisjen]

We buy organic milk. We taste the difference. It's produced by a small dairy in Frankfort, which is about 20 miles from here. It's unpasturized and unhomogenized Jersey milk. You have to shake it before pouring to mix in the cream. Or not. ;) You can taste the difference when the cows go out onto fresh pasture in the spring. It's very good, and when it starts to turn, it goes slighly cheesy-yogurty rather than rancid. Sort of a parmesian taste that lets you know to use it quick in some sort of cooking. We made some very interesting blueberry ice cream with some like that last summer. To make Karen feel better: It's $6/gallon.

With the national brands, I agree that there's little difference.

Dan

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

If we could get unpasteurised organic Jersey that would be worthwhile. But sadly Britain has a TB scare on and unpasteurised milk is hard to get at the moment.

[George Roberts]

Paul Pless ---

The price of organic food is not in line with the costs of organic food production.

Organic food has the same taste as fresh regular food.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by George Roberts:
Paul Pless ---

The price of organic food is not in line with the costs of organic food production.

Organic food has the same taste as fresh regular food.George; I agree with you to some extent, but the cost of bringing organic food to market is somewhat higher.

Organic food is fresh regular food ;)

[Paul Pless]

One of the central ideas behind organic is that it's going to be grown in an ecologically and socially sustainable manner. I don't think "organic" strawberries picked by sub-minimum wage migrant workers and shipped thousands of miles count.
Actually the central idea of organic food is that it grown without the use of pesticides orother chemicals or procedures that artificially maintain or ripen the crop. The issues of subminimum wage labor, etc, etc. have nothing to do with whether a food is organic. As an aside organic crops tend to be better for the environment but they also tend to be more labor intensive than normal crops.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by Paul Pless:
As an aside organic crops tend to be better for the environment but they also tend to be more labor intensive than normal crops.How so? From what I've seen, organic farms use the same machine-based agricultural techniques as non-organic farms, except for the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The only major difference I know of is that yields are lower due to greater loss from pests.

[Paul Pless]

Meerkat,

You give me pause to think about what i just posted. My orinal thought was lack of pesticide runoff, but other factors may mitigate this.

Paul

[Paul Pless]

incidentally, this sure has been a nice civil conversation thread, don' you think?

[Meerkat]

It is pleasant smile.gif

Whether it's artificial or natural, fertilizer run off is a major problem for the health of waterways and, ulitimately, our drinking water.

[NormMessinger]

Originally posted by Paul Pless:
incidentally, this sure has been a nice civil conversation thread, don' you think?Of course it is better, it is organic. tongue.gif

[brad9798]

I don't know much at all about the virtues of organic 'stuff.'

I'll ask my neighborhood grocer about it ... hopefully he'll shed some local light on it for me.

I'll try some things if available around me ... can't hurt anything to try it. It just MAY be better too ...

[Bigrock]

If youve ever tried to farmor garden organically after being on the gravy train of insectisides, fungicides, herbicides, and instantaneious acting ferttilizers then you realize the two systems are about as different in their approach to plant production as night and day. Organic is much more labor intense and environmentally friendly. Organic agriculture maintains or improves soil fertility and tilth. Chemically dependent agriculture does the opposite. The fruits and vegetables grown under organic systems are also purer with less carcnogenic substances contained therein. Year round produce of any and all varieties does not come with out a price. There are a number of countries in the world which continue to allow farmers to spray chemicals on produce which have been banned in the US due to their carcinogenic nature.
The better taste, texture and nutrition which is in organic foods is icing on the cake.

[huisjen]

Paul, what I meant was that social values are one of the things written into the national rules as something to be paid attention to. It's a core principle underlying the rules.

This gets back to the idea of organic certification versus organic practice. I'm a firm believer in organic practice. Certification is something we're still experimenting with.

I take the broad view. Organic practice to me means , in part, that we're trying to play nice with the whole ecosystem. That includes diesel trucks and migrant workers.

Dan

[Paul Pless]

Dan,

I agree. Your 'broad view' is very appealling. Please don't take this as an insult, but its also idealistic. I wish I could live my life to those ideals. At this point I honestly don't even try. Its kind of sad, I am thirty four and for years I worked hard to get where I am so that I would be free of some of the evils of this world, but I find myself not only trapped by those evils but also a medium for their spread. I am the system and the system sucks.

Paul

edited to add:

I think the best 'ideal' situation that i've seen are some of the community cooperative farms that are now being built.

[ 05-20-2004, 10:17 PM: Message edited by: Paul Pless ]

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by Bigrock:
Organic is much more labor intense and environmentally friendly. You're the second to say that organic farming is more labor intensive. I would like to know what makes it so?

[Paul Pless]

Meerkat,

Organic farming is hands on. You can't spray a crop with a pesticide that will residually last a month or more. You have to go out in the field and look at your crop and decide, what is or what will be, attacking it and then come up with a natural defense. Maybe release a beneficial insect onto your crop. Or you may have to do something physical, like cover your crop with mulch or plastic, or defend it in some other way. There will be no weed killer type herbicides used. Some crops will actually have to be weeded, just like your garden. Also you can't harvest your crop at a green stage and the ripen it artificially.

Its hard work. It took my sister over eight years to turn a profit on her farming venture.

[ 05-20-2004, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: Paul Pless ]

[Mrleft8]

All the vegetables in my garden are orgasmic.

[NormMessinger]

Bush Officials Weaken Organic Food Standards: Public Shut Out

The Bush Administration is giving Americans new reason to watch what they eat. Over the course of 10 days last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued three "guidances" and one directive -- all legally binding interpretations of law -- that threaten to seriously dilute the meaning of the word organic and discredit the department's National Organic Program.

The changes -- which would allow the use of antibiotics on organic dairy cows, as well as synthetic pesticides on organic farms, and more -- were made with zero input from the public or the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), the advisory group that worked for more than a decade to help craft the first federal organic standards, put in place in October 2002. More at www.bushgreenwatch.org (http://www.bushgreenwatch.org)

Yeah yeah, go ahead and shoot the messenger but that won't change the facts.

[Bigrock]

What makes organic more labor intense are a number of things. I will use one example concerning soil additives ie fertilizers. When a conventional ag farmer has the ag agent sample the soils of his fields the report will come back to add so much lime, so much nitrogen phosphorus and postassium- may be a trace element or two. This may need to be done 2 or 3 times over the growing season. So conventional farmer gets on his $100,000 John deere tractor with a fertilizer attachemnt on it or nitrogen tank and heads out to his field dumping a carefully calibrated mix onto his field. Usually not breaking a drop of sweat cause hes riding in his air conditioned cab.

The organic farmer must plan ahead and more carefully monitor his fields and anticipate several months in advance what amendments need to be incorporated- it will not be a matter of spreading liquid nitrogen onto his crop but growing a cover crop of clover, alfalfa, or soybeans a year a head of time so that the nitrogen that this years crop is going to need will be there.

Most commercial farm soils today are by and large sterile environments poisoned to within an inch of their lives and are nothing really more than petri dishes with a chemical auger slapped in place to grow the current crop. To recreate the living soil of microbes which the early settlers of this country found is a time consujming process. It is not done over nite or in a year or two. It is a commitment which is long term. Which is why commercial agriculture interests like adm could give a rats ass. They need to report to stock holders that this years crop was more prolific than last years. Notice please that I did not say a better crop- maybe more prolific with the addtion of chemical soup and gene splicing but not better.

[Paul Pless]

Norm,

That is really a shame, the bureaucrats entered this industry about a year ago, and they are already screwing it up. We can still hope that the independent trade organizations will be there for us.

Paul

[SUE H]

I sometimes buy free range chicken, and notice that it's good, but leaner & tougher than the regular grocery store chicken.

But the regular grocery store chickens spend their pitiful lives in a crowded cage, and have so much fat on them it's scary. I have to remove all of the fat before I can cook it, and that's usually a large percentage of the chicken.

I like organic, but it is pricey.

[huisjen]

Well here are some of my plans and pipedreams:

We have three quarter of an acre that we grew in last year, which is being turned into perennials, including cane fruits, grapes, strawberries, flowers, etc. We have another two acres that we're growing our market garden in this year, meaning all annual veg. and flowers. We have yet another two acre lot that's going to be the market garden next year and we're still trying to decide if we go into yet another in '06 or back into this year's lot. Or we may do two years in this plot and then two in the other.

The soil is a sandy clay loam, on a gentle slope, with plenty of water in the spring. It's wet and easily compacted, and opens up in cracks when it dries, due to the expansive clay in it. pH is 6.2. Organic matter is 4.3%. It was all in hay for 30 years up to 2001.

The plan is to cultivate the fallow plot repeatedly over the month of July to wear out weeds, then hill up the soil into ridges for the winter and plant a cover crop of grains and field peas on them. The grain will be rye if it stays fallow next year, or oats (which winter kill) if we're going to turn it over to market garden. The ridges drain faster, so we can knock the tops off them in the spring and plant without much additional cultivation.

At some point I should add some subsoiling crop, maybe canola or rape to the fallowing mix. And maybe a cow or sheep to clip it back (rotating them elsewhere when it's been cut enough). Adding buckwheat will improve calcium and phosphorous cycling. For the time being we're also adding coloidal phosphate, gypsum, and a type of bagged mineral humate or kelp meal for micronutrients. In the long run, we hope to do most of our nutrient production through cover crops and rotations.

Weed control in the market garden is done through cultivation, although I'd like to get a flame weeder for knocking back the weeds just before the seeded crops pop up. Insect control is sometimes done through a few sprays (Bt, pyrethrum types, organic aproved) but I hope mostly to just outgrow the bugs. We've got some flea beetles now, but as long as the crop grows fast enough they won't be a problem. We had an awful time with the potato beetles last year, except for the potatoes that sprouted out of the compost pile, reminding us that with propper nutrition, the bugs aren't a problem. We may use some foliar feed sprays to fight insects too.

As for the price of production, I'm using a Ferguson TO-35 less and less, and a Satoh (Mitsubishi) Elk more and more. The Elk is more fuel efficient, lighter, and has a narrower spacing between the wheels, making for beds we can step over. I've got a disc-hiller, a cultivator, and a rototiller that go on it, plus a two bottom sulky plow, a disc, and a bog harrow for the Ferguson. All this equipment for the tractors is either well used or homebuilt. I am not paying $100,000 for equipment. I also do a fair amount of hand hoeing (Keep the hoe Sharp!), and seed with a Wolf-Garten seeder (which is vaguely remenicent of a Fisher-Price popper toy). Transplanting is done by hand.

All sales are local.

Speaking of which, I need to go transplant onions now.

Dan

Edit: Paul, I take no offence at all from the idea that capital-O Organic is idealistic. Nor do I think I'll ever reach that goal, but I try to keep it in mind.

[ 05-21-2004, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: huisjen ]

[Donn]

I love it when you talk like that, Dan! How about some pics?