[Market-farming] Dennis Avery article

Ploughshare gjbrever at midwestinfo.net
Fri Sep 7 12:08:32 EDT 2007


Dennis Avery strikes again... yesterday's Mpls Star Tribune

A new danger has beset the nation's struggling organic farms -- too much 
rain.
Hundreds of organic farms in southwestern Wisconsin and southeastern 
Minnesota were drenched by a foot of rain in late August. The heavy downpour 
washed out plantings, eroded soil, and damaged fences and buildings. The 
owner of Wisconsin's Harmony Valley Farm estimated his damages at $300,000.

"We have a lot of steep, hilly county, and we've had a lot of mudslides," 
said Tom Van Der Linden, a nearby agent for the Minnesota Extension Service.

Now let me get this straight. Organic farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota have 
concentrated themselves on steep, hilly land that is prone to mudslides?

That's a bad idea, given that organic farms already refuse to use the 
low-till farming systems that protect soil most effectively. The low-till 
systems depend on herbicides to control choking weeds, but the organic 
farmers won't use "synthetic" pesticides. They choose, instead, to use the 
old bare-earth farming systems, with plows and mechanical cultivators that 
invite erosion.

It sounds to me as though the organic farmers have chosen the wrong land. 
Disasters like this won't happen often, but mudslides even one year out of 
50 is too much for good soil health. Perhaps we need a code of conduct for 
organic farmers that would bar organic plantings on steep slopes likely to 
produce mudslides after heavy rains. The county extension agents should 
readily be able to identify the classes of land suitable for the increased 
risks of organic production.

Otherwise, the public is being set up to make all kinds of "emergency" 
payments to organic farmers who had been preparing to sell their produce for 
"organic premiums" on the high-priced shelves of Whole Foods Markets. The 
public shouldn't be on the hook for such risky premium-seeking. After all, 
the organic growers keep bragging that their farming system is more 
sustainable and more "earth-friendly" than conventional farming.

Europe is already caught up in this nonsense. The Cooperative Wholesale 
Association testified to the British House of Lords in 1999 that weeds were 
a special problem for organic farmers. Indeed, too often the weeds took over 
the fields, choking out the crops. The farmer then had to plow down his crop 
to prevent the weeds from going to seed and ruining the next year's crop as 
well. The association said this was "no problem for the farmer, because the 
EU government compensates the farmers for their weed losses."

We need to remember that the world is short of good cropland. We're already 
farming 37 percent of the earth's land area, and most of the high-quality 
land is already cropped. By 2050, we'll need twice as much farm output for 
more than 8 billion affluent people demanding meat, milk and pet food. The 
organic farms already lose about half of their crop potential because they 
refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer and the more effective synthetic 
pesticides. They're already suing conventional farmers for "pollen 
pollution" from biotech seeds. Now they're starting to campaign for 
"disaster payments" on mudslides and weeds.

With the higher yields of conventional farms, we can leave the steep 
hillsides for wildlife habitat. Shouldn't that be our environmental goal?

Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington 
and is the director for Center for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org).




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