Sal and Wytze,
Sal wrote:
>> then u got your certifier and the local chapter and the
>> inspector and the state and their cars and their computer
>> and their kids need their teeth fix and on and on. you get
>> the idea. a big hole a bottomless pit needs feeding and the
>> organic farmer will pay and pay and pay and for what to be
>> known as no safer or no better for the earth than conventional
>> farmer.
Don't you think the certifier and inspector have a right to earn a living
doing their job? This doesn't really have anything to do with protecting
the earth, it is a truth-in-labeling issue, and inspection is legitimate
work.
Wytze wrote:
> As an "organic consumer" I like to know that the products I
> buy are indeed organic.
How are you going to know that without some kind of publicly verifiable and
defined certification?
> That does not mean the farmers should have to bleed to death in
> order to show that they are organic.
Well, someone has to pay, right? The grower will pass these increased costs
on to the consumer. Consumers of "organic" food (including you) want some
sort of certification, and they will have to pay for it.
IMO the real irritating problems include:
1. Inefficiency of public sector (hopefully inspection can be a private,
competitive enterprise)
2. Regressive nature of certification. Do farmers who gross, say, $50,000,
have to pay the same fees as farmers who gross $5,000,000? If that is the
case, then the certification cost per production unit is way higher for the
small farmer. Maybe there should be a sliding fee scale to make this more
equitable. For example, in US SEED certification systems, seed producers
pay a fee by-the-bag for certification. This makes the cost scale-neutral.
> The same thing more or less happens here in my own country.
> The fees just make it impossible for small organic producers
> to get their businesses from the ground. I really hope you
> manage to stop this fee madness.
This is the complaint of all small business owners regarding government
regulation of all sorts. IMO, this is the dark side of the
liberal-progressive vision of government involved in the details of economic
life. I would always rather see industry self-regulation, than government
regulatory systems. Yet, there may be a role for government in overseeing
the self-regulatory process. Isn't that what is going on with this organic
definition thing? Isn't it just the government trying to standardize
vocabulary and regulatory procedures? Won't inspection continue to be done
by private certifiers? (please forgive my ignorance about this)
Is this a case of a clique of large growers trying to ram through a
regressive fee structure in order to enhance their competitiveness?
Dale
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 11 2000 - 22:02:12 EDT