Organic?????

you know, my uncle jim is dying from lymphatic cancer, he is 48. he has been a health food organic diet exersize and vitamin freak all his life.

my granny was a on old farmer who te what she grew, never smoked drank or swore.
eat up head to toe with cancer. dead at 70
same for my old uncle bill, bone cancer. dead at 68
my other uncle, dead at 39 from cancer.

so clean living means diddly squat for your longevity or the health of the universe. you live to be 90 because 1]you luck out or 2]you have a recessive gene that blinks on.

my one granny was also a farmer woman (more hardcore than the other) she smoked a pipe (inhaled) drank a nip of medicine for her bones and died at 97.
my great aunt rachelle smoked 3 packs a day, drank like a sailor, cussd like one too. she had one lung cut out froom the smokes and she died at 90.
a few of my other relatives are iin thier 80-90s and still driving and smoking and sucking down fast food....

death is a game of chance, I doubt honestly..... diet and habits have much to do with it.
luck and genes.

as for the planets health.... its gone thru cycles of extinctions and environmental shifting, ice ages and warmings.

i think it does that despite out input.

False statements about ORGANIC foods.

Only small farmers grow organic....... Not so major corporate farms produce more organic foods than the little guys. Take a look at MorningStar, Wholefoods and more.

Organic is more labor intensive and takes more workers.... Not so it can be but doesn't have to be. Just go to a farm owned by Wholefoods and you can see how mechanized it can be. It doesn't require thousands of migrant workers alot can be done with the same machinery conventional farmers use, planters, seeders, tillers, harvesters, and more.

We've only been using chemicals since WWII with the use of fertilizer based chemicals and pesticides like DDT..... Not so I hear this alot that we never used chemicals or pesticides or poisons before WWII The Romans figured out that certain fish that produced a poison could be used as a natural pesticide to keep down certain bugs in their gardens way back then and we have been poisoning our food ever since. There are other countries and time periods who have done the same thru out history so pesticides and chemicals are nothing new.

Why the cost difference? You will get alot of answers but here are the two main reasons I foresee. 1. To be a certified Organic grower the USDA requires the farmers to do more paperwork and more traceability back to the food sources. The amount of paperwork and cost of certified organic seeds, and making sure they comply with all the testing necessary cost the farmer more time and money. Sure they are not paying for pesticides and chemicals but they still require inputs to their soil and require certified inputs now because of the USDA organic qualifications. Thus the pass along this added cost to the consumer.
2. If I can get 4 dollars for two tomatoes instead of 2 dollars for two tomatoes which would I pick if I am the seller. I can charge more for organics because you will pay more and I can make more. it all about business. I have worked some on an organic farm and am trying to start my own. Me personally I dont see that it cost me any more to produce an organic tomato than it does a conventional but everyone is different.

Organic produces less product and so must charge more. Not so I hear people say that alot too that organic producers cant produce as much per acre or they have less output. This simply is not true. If done properly organic can meet or exceed the traditional farming output of produce per acre. It doesn't have to be less. The farms producing less are either having a bad year, don't know what they are doing, or are small backyard farmers who have no clue.

I'm also hearing about alot of weeding. People seem to think organic farms are weed farms for some reason. LOL Again when using large scale farming techniques like tilling there shouldn't be that many weeds. Also small scale organic farms I know use alot of mulches using compost and woodchips and news paper and so on for side mulching keeps down weeds. Also growing certain types of plants closer together than traditional farming will help shade out weeds.
organic farming and produce doesn't cost more because organic farmers weed all day and all night. They shouldnt have to if they are doing it right.

To my understanding, KRAFT, and many other big manufacturers are now into 'organic' as they see it bringing them more profit.



A tractor, a combine, harvesters, refrigerator trucks, a factory to sort and clean the produce can handle more volume of product faster and at lower expense than Fred.

Fred doing the labor by himself, no tractor, no harvester, no refrigerator truck, no factory, etc; can only work limited hours per day, handling a limited volume of product. Into his 30 year old pickup truck and into market. It is more labor intensive, when it is done by hand without the machinery!

When a large corporation gets into it, they can dump millions into the machinery and the operation will look just like any other corporate farm.

But when your local organic Fred is doing it, he has very little or no equipment to use.



The story of the dust bowl and Great Depression is a wonderful story about America's first introduction in petro-chem fertilizers and American farmers poisoning their soils.

Both of my grandfathers farmed before petro-chem fertilizers were introduced to American farmers, and they both saw the results. they both lost their farms during the dust-bowl, from the resultant salted soils.

My father today, is back in Missouri trying to farm it once again. That soil has never made a full recovery, from the damage done immediately prior to the Dust Bowl.



The same could be said of producers who use fertilizers: "farms producing less are either having a bad year, don't know what they are doing, or are small backyard farmers who have no clue"

I didn't know this...I thought (not from hearing this...just assuming it) that it was caused by drought. Hmmm, I have to do some reading! Thanks!

Humanure if you read the book and follow the instructions, there are *no* disease risks.

It's not pooping in the garden, folks.

__________________
Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

ET1 SS, you need to call up your local inspector of agriculture and ask them about whether organic hybrid seeds can be used on an organic farm. We've had this discussion before. My best friend is an inspector for the Idaho dept of agriculture, and I asked her about this. She said that as long as the hybrid seeds was organic, it's OK, but GMO is not. Th eorganic regulations do not vary from state to state.

Per the general discussion, these same inspectors visit the organic farms and ensure that the product is being produced in strict compliance with the organic standards. My friend is constantly alert for violations or people posing as organic that need to be busted. I am sure that a dishonest person could get away with violations, just like anything else, especially if they only did it once. But if they continue to do so on a regular basis, chances are they willl get busted.

I know that my friend has a lot of respect for the organic farmers who work their butts off to do it right, and nothing would make her happier than to bust someone who was cheating and getting the same label as the hard working folks.

that is nice that your friend is a govt worker, but she needs to realize that the word "organic" may have been trademarked, but those of us who don't pay the govt to call our products organic are usually doing business better and by stricter standards than any govt entity could make us do. we just don't jump through the hoops or believe that the USDA has any business telling us that we have an inferior product simply because it is unregulated. I will be looking into the "certified naturally grown" label, but what I tell people is that I use "certified organic bred chicks raised on green pasture and fed organic certified grain" which gets the point across, but not actually calling my operation "organic" or using the term anywhere in my labeling.
I hope the cheating you refer to is more about using pesticides when they say they don't and that kind of thing, but I think it is more about the govt having their noses in a lot of places it doesn't belong and always protecting the big agrifarms that originally trademarked the name so they could sell substandard products at ridiculous prices and undermine the quality of local small scale farmers.
My customers know what they are getting, they know me, and they are welcome at my house. The inspectors can keep out unless they have a warrant. They can see me from the main road, but they cannot come on the premises without permission. NAIS is still a threat, and raw milk is practically considered a cultish way of life. Gotta love progress and govt intrusion. It must all be for the good of the public, YEAH RIGHT!!!!

The USDA doesn't tell anyone that anything is inferior regarding organic vs non.
Organic is a marketing tool only as far as they are concerned.

Well, if you aren't promoting your product as organic, I don't see that there's an issue. There are people who are working their butts off and going through a lot of trouble to get certified. Selling stuff as organic when it isn't certified organic is not only dishonest, it's cheating the ones who are dishonest. The certified organic farmers aren't being "made" to follow the rules, they signed up for it.

I think all of our local organic farms here are small. Cheating would encompass using products or practices that do not conform to organic as well as false advertising; calling a product organic when it isn't certified.

I think you are a little paranoid. The ag inspectors (or my friend at least, she's the only one I know) are busy people. They have a lot to do, not only inspecting organic farms, but any nursery, feed mills, setting out insect traps, etc etc. The only time she would bother someone not signed up for the organic program or in the nursery/feed businesses is if they are advertising or promtoing their product as organic when they're not actually certified, and I think it has to be labeled as such. A rumor is not enough, she has to be able to verify it. Even then, I can't see her just storming someone's farm.

I don't think the organic label is strict enough, and I think my friend would agree. She has said that in her opinion, Horizon's organic dairy products aren't that great, and they aren't as organic as they claim to be, whereas Organic Valley is extremely reputable. However, there needed to be a way to verify the claims that were being made, and there needed to be a standard, and the certification sets minimal standards. I would like for there to be guidelines for enviromental friendliness (for every five acres of monocultured organic corn, an acre of bird, insect, native plant or animal habitat, plus required crop rotation) and humane standards (I think there is something like this in California, Redwood Hills dairy conforms to it), that would hand soem of the power back to the small farmers, because I think it's almost impossible to have a huge farm (crops) or factory farm (animals) and be enviro friendly or humane. I have heard that some organic eggs aren't even actually pastured, they just get to run around in the dirt...which of course is a step up from living in cages, I spose.

Actually, that's not true. This is what the USDA says on it's web page:

"If your gross agricultural income from organic sales total $5,000 or less annually, you are exempt from certification (see section 205.101(a)(1) of the NOP regulations). Exempt operations must comply with the applicable requirements of subpart C and the labeling requirements at section 205.310 of the NOP regulations."
http://prod.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams...0Applicability

The reality is the Certified Organic program is tailored to the bigger producers and hurts the smaller producers who are producing organic products even if it isn't certified.

As I've mentioned, there is an alternative to doing the government's expensive Certified Organic program. Check out Certified Naturally Grown which means more and costs less. You can find out more at http://NaturallyGrown.org

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

doing things "organic" and being certified, to me, are world's apart. I agree with Walter about the Naturally Grown label. I just think that patenting the word doesn't mean that I am not an organic grower. Southerers call every soda "coke" even if it is Pepsi. I call denim pants "Levi's" even though they are LL Bean brand. The word organic has been around longer than the FDA or USDA seem to think. I prefer to think of my operation as "uncertified organic" and would feel comfortable calling it that. As I have said before, my customers know what they are getting. There is no harm in telling them the truth, even if the govt doesn't want me using the word. The Organic Certified label doesn't mean anything to me, since I know the lax rules they use. I see places that are certified and they don't do anything nearly as clean and natural as I do. I just don't want to pay anyone to be able to call my product what it is, Organic and Naturally Grown.

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