> Please don't make the assumption that an "organic" farm is by nature
> diverse. It is a common error to believe that organic farming is the
> pinnacle of sustainability. "It ain't necessarily so..." A
> *well-designed* organic farm is diverse, but most organic farms are not
> well designed, and unfortunately too many organic certification
> programs look the other way. There are certified organic farms (note
> the plural) that produce absolutely nothing but wheat.
Bart Hall,
Thanks for your insightful comments regarding organic farming as, "not the
pinnacle of sustainablilty". The myth that organic agriculture is
synonymous with sustainablity needs to be addressed.
I wholeheartedly agree with your closing statement, "Sustainability is
built one farm at a time".
Steve Groff
>
>
> I inspect organic farms for a living, and have inspected something in
> excess of 600,000 acres in the last seven years. The majority of the
> farms I have inspected are probably not sustainable (almost certianly
> not agronomically sustainable, and probably not financially
> sustainable). I have worked with some absolutely inspiring organic
> farms, but a lot of them--especially cash croppers--are quite
> disappointing.
>
> This isn't going to sit well with the advocates of the 'poor, noble,
> oppressed farmer' school of thought, but far too many farmers coming
> over to organics are just plain lousy farmers in the first place, and
> think that the premiums will save their farm. They have cut back
> chemicals in an effort to save money, and they compare $16 organic
> specialty beans with $5 conventional dark-hilum beans and get on the
> phone to the certification program. If they have land coming out of
> CRP, so much the better. Then they ship a weedy crop with dirty seed
> coats and 15% splits, yet blame the buyer when they get docked for
> their own mis-handling of the crop.
>
> >Furthermore, under conditions of competition (instead of cooperation),
> >a farm ran "more like a business" would be tend to externalize more
> >and more of its costs to remain competitive.
>
> A good business doesn't *externalize* its costs to become competitive,
> it finds creative ways to ELIMINATE them. For example, when I was
> producing organic vegetables on a commercial scale (organically), the
> costs for keeping things weeded were substantial, and the revenue from
> those vegetables was several months down the road.
>
> First task, reduce the expense --- we cut it by over 70% by including
> forages in the rotation, abandoning early crops (more time for
> mechanical control in the spring), by bringing cattle into the system,
> and by standardizing our row system so that an $800 tool could take
> care of most early-season weeding.
>
> Second task, make sure we didn't have to pay interest on the money for
> the expenses we still did have --- so the end of July every year I
> would sell some of the cows. Cow prices are always good (relatively) in
> late July because people eat a lot of hamburgers, and most hamburgers
> are out on pasture until fall. I knew in advance how many I had to
> sell, and found reasons to cull that many.
>
> Come fall, when the vegetable money was in and cattle are cheap, I
> bought at least the same number of cows, and always of better quality
> than those I had sold. We weren't afraid to grade the vegetables
> tightly (good for marketing) because they were excellent feed for
> cattle. Vegetables improved the cattle (culling and better nutrition)
> and the cattle improved the vegetables (better weeding, good compost,
> and well-timed cash flow).
>
> And if you aren't asking it, you should be, so I'll tell you .... this
> guy isn't in the vegetable business right now because the only land he
> could afford in the 1970s was too stoney for really good vegetable
> production, and after three bad weather years in the late 80s I got out
> whille I still had some equity. I'm still looking for the right land --
> at a price that will cash flow even when organic premiums are slim.
>
> >Because they are so economically and politically powerful, the big
> >corporations can externalize their costs more easily and thus appear
> >"more economically viable."
>
> I guess that's why Premium Standard is in and out of bankruptcy, in
> spite of abundant government assistance ??
>
> >Under a context of a competitive market system therefore, the stacks
> >are heavily loaded against the organic/ecological farmer, who will
> >tend to appear more economically inefficient and unsustainable than
> >the chemical/industrial farmer.
>
> You folks that are discussing entire economic systems ... just don't
> get it. Sustainability happens *one farm at a time.* Research in Iowa
> has shown that continuous alfalfa has a higher *net* return per acre
> than any other rotation. Number 2 isn't even close. Alfalfa is
> agronomically and economically more sustainable than #2 yellow corn.
> There are Iowa farms (both conventional and organic) that have included
> a lot of alfalfa -- they're doing well. There are plenty of others
> (both conventional and organic) that have not, and many of those are
> struggling because their land system is hurting. Same climate. Same
> economic system. You can't blame either the climate or the economic
> system for those that are having trouble.
>
> I wish I had $100 for every organic farm that has bought equipment
> and/or land assuming that $16 beans are going to last forever. For
> every dairy farmer (organic or otherwise) that bought a new pick-up
> based on $16 milk. For every cash cropper that bought more land based
> on $4 corn and $8 beans. These are all *individual* decisions, and are
> generally quite poor allocations of scarce capital.
>
> As long as we persist in confusing association and *causality* in
> regard to free markets---assuming that because failing farms are
> associated with free markets they are *caused* by them---we will not be
> particularly useful to anyone. What we need to do is make sound (read
> sustainably oriented) agronomic and economic advice available to those
> *individual* farmers who want it. I'll repeat what I said in an
> earlier post --- the *well-managed* medium sized family farm (organic
> or conventional) can be an extremely successful competitor in the free
> market --- we need to develop and share tools for improving those
> management skills. Sustainability is built one farm at a time.
>
> Bart Hall
> Lawrence, Kansas
>
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-- "New Generation Cropping Systems": the cutting edge of sustainable agriculture http://www.cedarmeadowfarm.com Steve Groff Cedar Meadow Farm 679 Hilldale Rd Holtwood PA 17532 USA Ph. 717-284-5152
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