Market Farming

["gutierrez-lagatta" <gutierrez-lagatta AT charter.net>]

Welcome to the group Eliot, and thank you for starting the ball
rolling on this discussion around the country.  There is also a thread
on this in the Organic Gardening forum on www.gardenweb.com.  It is
interesting that you can sell all that you can grow wihtin a 25 mile
radius.  I assume you are a diversified grower.  For growers or
farmers specializing in something more specific, say herbs, or goat
cheese, however, the range needs to be extended.  The customers get
the benefit of concentrated expertise and the producer gets an
adequate size market area for their product.

I think cheating goes on now and will go on under an "authentic food"
label also that cannot be identified by the average consumer.  I can
give you at least 7 different examples  are from my own experiences in
several cities over the past 3 years where the use of "organic" is
either violated grossly or stretched by growers.  Cheating already
goes on and will continue to do so and it is all too easy to bamboozle
even a fairly informed public.
>  If  the consumers don't care enough to know their farmer or check
up on
> him/her, maybe they deserve to be bamboozled.  I also think local
pressure
> would nail the cheats in a locally based system.

I have always like the term "beyond organic" myself, but know that
this cannot be used.
>  The only way to compete is to go them one better.  Beyond organic,
> that's us.  Can the feds stop this?  Not unless they repeal the
first
> ammendment.

Adriana Gutierrez
Birmingham, AL