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  • From: Paul Bucciaglia <pbucciaglia AT yahoo.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Research $ and the cost of organic food
  • Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 16:30:44 -0800 (PST)

Regarding the debate on the high cost of organic grain:

One thing to factor in is the enourmous amount of money poured into research on chemical, fuel, and heavy machinery intensive farming since WW II.  Until, very recently, most reasearch into organic farming has been done by by the farmers themselves.  Not only were the State U's not interested, they acively discouraged it for a number or reasons (Ag departments depend heavily on funding by big agribusiness).  Of course this has begun to change in the last 10 years or so.  But today, organic and sustainable ag research still makes up a small percentage of ag government sponsored ag research.  That means that organic producers are still heavily reliant on technologies such as cultivation, which are eons old--come and see all my 40 year old tractors if you want proof ;-)  If we continue to INVEST in wisely chosen technologies, we may see more cost effective (and soil protecting) forms of organic agriculture.  Since money talks, there needs to be a demand for teh product before organiztions (government, corporations, small business) invest in new technologies to produce it.  This is why I support the call for 100% organic feed in organic livestock production.  I was against this at first, but reasoned that if we allow meat to be labled as organic without growing the feed that way, there will never be a reason to give up the pesticides. 

Of course they should be doing intensive grazing anyways, which would make the whole argument moot!

Paul Bucciaglia

Fort Hill Farm



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