Why must we keep attacking the very ones who are trying to help us? If we
continue to bash these people, who in many cases are small-scale farmers
themselves, we will further alienate them and drive deeper the wedge between
the old paradigm and the new. Yes, I know there are those extension and
university types who are so set in the old ways they will never acknowledge
us. But, based on my travels through the country over the past two years, I
am sure there are more positive than negative agents out there, by a huge
number.
One recent posting to this list even bashed both the extension AND the
organicists. In response to that message, no, it was not a search for a
"ego-boost" for organics that brought USDA into the organic certification
debacle. It had to do with some 44 independent certification agencies being
in total conflict with one another. What products and techniques one agency
would certify, another would not. Yes, the USDA has bungled the process
horribly, partly because of pressure from agri-business and big-business in
general. But, given the circumstances and the extreme business and personal
interests involved, it may have been an impossible task from the beginning.
Perhaps the outcome will be a totally independent agency to handle organic
certification, and the USDA will fade from the organic scene. An analogy is
the residential and commercial building industries, that until the early
70's had a independent building code in each town or county. You can imagine
what a mess that created, when each building inspector had a different set
of rules, and the builder needed to know all of them. That has now been
replaced by 4 major building codes, one for each of the major bio-regions of
the country.
As for the size of the organic industry, I can assure you that any segment
of agriculture that has billions of dollars in sales each year, and is
increasing capacity and sales at the rate of 20% per year, is not "meager".
And, I think research dollars are definitely needed by this emerging
sustainable agriculture industry. A case in point is the question of
nutritional value of free range eggs versus conventionally grown eggs. There
is no scientific answer, because the question has never been addressed in a
scientific way. All the evidence we have right now is anecdotal, which is
certainly good enough for me, but doesn't appease the scientists among us.
This would be an excellent proposal for a SARE grant application. Let's make
money available to a farmer and a scientist to find out if the free range
eggs are hype, or are there truly some beneficial properties in these eggs
that make them worth the price people are willing to pay.
Finally, I want to point out that when most of us refer to Free Range eggs
we are in fact talking about the real thing. Unfortunately, the USDA
definition says the birds have to have access to the out-of-doors. It
doesn't say from what age, for how many hours per day, or what type of
"out-of-doors", or what stocking rate per acre, or what type of forage has
to be available. As a result, a lot of what are called Free Range products
are not, period. Same thing with organic certification of eggs that come
from caged or loose housed layers. This is in my opinion a travesty. Just
because they get fed "certified organic" feed doesn't make the product
organic if the birds don't have fresh forage, sunshine, exercise, and
freedom to move around at will. It's just not an organic system unless the
whole system is organic.
Regards,
Andy Lee
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