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  • From: "Sharon and Steve" <shopkins AT tdstelme.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Denver Post Op-ed
  • Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 06:47:50 -0400


From: "road's end farm" <organic101 AT linkny.com>
Did you actually read my post?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dont know, many Market-farming posts take days to arrive here. But I do know that my files show that I have never responded to any posts from your address.

The quotes of my work that you have here are in responce to a post from Robin in which I took the whole op-ed and inserted my thoughts. If you found something personal I sure did not intend it, and I doubt that it was there because as you point out I do not know you or anything about you.

I can only restate my opinion that the folk who operate with traditional organic principles are one thing and those who claim that the hoops they jumped through to get are all thats needed to get $30.00 per hdwt for their milk are something else. The percentage of the latter is, in my opinion much higher than you apparently believe; I think there are enough cheaters that the organic milk pool is diluted enough that paying double for it is a rip-off of the consumer.

MAsteveINE








I made a very strong point of doing no
such thing. I have very rarely heard other organic growers do so; and
on the few occasions when I have, both I and other organic growers
present have objected to it. Most of us prefer to be on good terms with
our neighbors, not to be screaming at them.

And I didn't say that strong wording was a crime. I objected to some of
Jackie Avner's strong wording with some moderately strong wording of my
own, not by calling the police.

In some cases she is giving too much credit to the organic producer,
come on
over and we will follow the grain delivery truck, the milk pick up
truck; we
will look at the pastures, the barns, and a bunch of stuff that will
show
that you that organic is just a word. [. . . ]
if
you want to go buy something that carries a USDA Organic sticker go
ahead.........but dont expect it to be anything buit a rip off.


And I resent being told, in effect, that I and others who I know are
lying about our organic practices, by someone who has never met us and
never seen our farms.

I'm sure you can find a few unscrupulous people posing as organic who
are lying; just as I'm sure you can find a few conventional farmers who
are happy to poison everything that moves and some things that don't.
But neither of these things are true of most of either group of people.

If you know specific farmers who are claiming their product is organic
when they are in gross violation of organic practices, then I urge you
to report them. I don't know how you can tell by following the feed
truck, however, unless you know for sure everything that's in the load.
They might be hauling organic and conventional feed in the same truck,
if it's bagged feed and bagged separately; or even if it's bulk, if the
truck has been cleaned inbetween. I have had lime brought to my fields
by the regular lime spreader from a conventional fertilizer company. I
had to get a signed statement from them that, in addition to their
ordinary cleaning procedures, the previous load (applied to a
conventional farm) had also been lime, so as to make sure that any
residue from whatever had been previously hauled in that truck had been
effectively cleared out.

If your problem is with the USDA version of organic, please snarl at
the USDA, and not at organic growers in general. Most of us don't like
a lot of what gets by under the USDA any better than you do (I'm
thinking, among other things, of the failure to enforce genuine pasture
access regulations). I agree that going entirely and only by the UDSA
label, without knowing anything about the actual producers, may get you
something that most of us don't think is organic at all; but the fact
that some of us have the USDA label doesn't mean that we're all lying
and just trying to rip you off.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale


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