Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[realfood@wonderfulfarm.com]

So this article really bothers me - while I understand her point - if her hens are only eating "a little grain"  then why not spend the extra dollars on it.  Surely it doesnt cost her a dollar more a dozen to feed "a little bit" of grain.  

While I dont care about the certification aspects of organic, acknowedging the land/water impacts of conventional are important to me.  Is she drinking the contaminated water from the runoff from the grain fields?  Soil life, aquatic life and really all life is endangered by our conventional methods of growing grains.

Lets do the math:  A laying hen eats about 1/4 pound of feed a day (hers probably less because they only eat "a little bit").  So where I live organic feed is $20/50 pounds or 40 cents a pound.  If she is eating 1/4 pound (and remember her hens are only eating "a little bit") that comes to 10 cents a day for feed per hen on organic feed and 5 cents per hen on conventional (it is about half the cost here as well).  So it will cost aproximately $1.50/dozen eggs for a hen in good lay if you feed organic and 75 cents if you feed conventional feed.  That means that she would make a quarter more by feeding organic feed because she would get a dollar more per dozen and it only costs her 75 cents more for the feed.  And if she direct marketed her eggs she would be getting much much more for her eggs then the cost differential she gets wholesaling them to her local natural food store.

I guess it irritates me that she is justifying using conventional grain because of cost.  What about the environmental cost to the land and the water in growing the conventional grain she uses.  I am not advocating for certification here but really I dont think that there is any way to justify purchasing conventional grain any more.  

Blessings,

Aliza


“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Howard Thurman