Market Farming

[Mike Brabo <mdbrabo AT att.net>]

Dear precious farmers,

Living overseas and currently located near ground "Zero" in the St Louis area I've seen first hand the damage that "M", other multinational corporations and various governments have allowed.

*  When a chef prepared a meal for "M" execs the ingredients were specifically requested to be organic.

*  "M" has wide sway over the local media.

*  I personally know "M" employees.  One is a member of our CSA while others buy from us at local markets.  They PREFER local, non-gmo, organically raised produce.

*  Our relatives farm conventionally 1200 acres, some of which borders our farm.  NINE straight seasons of GM corn.  In the spring when everything is starting to grow on our side of the fence their field looks like a moonscape.  Profitable? Yes, in the short run...

*  I spent 2 years living in Eastern Europe downwind from Chernobyl.  I've seen first hand the results of centralized-agricultural "Co-Ops" and the mayhem it causes in the ecosystems.  Not to mention the environmentally caused heavy metal poisoning, radiation exposure and subsequent thyroid cancer I've had to deal with personally.

*  I've been to villages in rural India and seen the lives that farmers struggle with....  Many are no longer able to save their own seed.  100k+ have committed suicide.  Read it!  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html

*  In Eastern Europe/Ukraine, peasants, millions of them, were eradicated by big government by their desire to control the food supply and thus the population.  Here in America we're too educated to call people "peasants".  Here we call them "farmers."   Sadly, history often repeats itself.

It's especially difficult to face relatives who laugh at us for what we're doing.  "Why would I want to sweat in the heat picking green beans when I can kick back in the A/C cab of my dad's $200k tractor listening to my iPod?" a young cousin quipped.

Todd has it right...   It is all about the money.  AND control I may add.  

For me and my family, it's a precious, personal freedom to be able to determine what we put into our bodies.  Sadly most of the world's population doesn't have that freedom.  We're effecting positive change one person and family at a time.

My 2.2¢
Mike
Vesterbrook Farm - Certified Naturally Grown
Clarksville, Missouri - Mississippi River Bluffs, Zone 6

On Jan 17, 2011, at 5:36 PM, Todd Lister wrote:

I am an American farmer.
There is very little doubt about Monsanto and the greed that drives them and their kind to put profits ahead of ALL else. I would bet that the number of American farmers with a positive impression of Monsanto has to be at least five. Read up a bit about the legal battles innocent farmers are facing. Maybe read Silent spring. Read a little about India and the recent move away from the American poison dealers.
Monsanto is leading the pack when it comes to buying up seed catalog companies and closing them, eliminating heirlooms that don't sell enough for their greedy expectations. There is no help on this issue coming from anywhere.
Monstersanto, Dow, Union Carbide and the others playing at that level are unquestionably enemies of all farmers everywhere and certainly enemy #1 of the planet.
People who stand up for these multinationals likely own their stock or simply don't understand what is happening at the hands of people who have NO national loyalties.
BP, Exxon,  Monsanto, Dow and too many others are an enemy of all nations and heros to Wall Street.
Eat what you want but don't ever expect those who recognize the devil to go back to eating his food. Is there anyone out there who thinks the national food chain is in good health?
Sorry to rant on like this but I see this in the same light as Haliburton or The Carlyle Group and their love affair with endless war.
Follow the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I often wonder if these people have kids.
Todd Lister
Veribest Farm
Vesta, Ga

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Deb Taft <growbd AT aol.com> wrote:

Well said.  Thank You, Rivka.

Deb
American Farmer

-----Original Message-----
From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 3:25 pm
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] prices & quality

Steve, I am an American farmer.

And I most certainly see poor quality produce in the stores. 

Some of it was organically grown; some of it was conventionally grown; some of it was grown in the USA; some of it was grown in other countries. 

Some of it may have been fine when it left the farm, and have been mishandled by the shipper and/or the retailer. In other cases the damage is of a type that almost certainly occured in the field, and/or the lack of flavor is due to the produce being a shipping variety and harvested before full ripeness.

I'm selling produce bred and produced for flavor; which does, yes, cost more money to grow per marketable fruit. And I price as seconds, or give away, produce of a quality that I've seen priced and displayed as firsts on grocery shelves (yes, there's also a lot of lovely produce on the grocery shelves; though much of it is lovelier to the eye than to the taste buds).

We do, indeed, have the cheapest diet the world has ever seen. (Whether it's the most nutritious is much harder to determine.) We also have the fewest farmers as a percentage of population unit that the world has ever seen. Those of us who want to stay in business do need to be talking about quality.

If you want to object to a particular fashion of talking about quality, that''s fine. How to pull of the interesting trick of talking up one's own produce without running down the produce being sold by the grower at the next stall is certainly worth discussing; because that's what we need to be doing  (presuming the grower at the next stall isn't selling three week old junk that was bought from the supermarket because it wasn't good enough for the supermarket any longer -- I've seen that at something claiming to be a farmers' market, though not at any that I go to).

However, saying that we need to publicize great quality produce is not an attack on "American Farmers". There are, indeed, lots of "American Farmers" who are producing great food. Again, educating about quality is a way to keep such people in business. How does that amount to attacking them/us?

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly

Fresh-market organic produce, small scale

On Jan 17, 2011, at 2:30 PM, MAsteveINE wrote:

 

Yeah, pardon me for getting a bit prickely when folk bring up low quality and "nasty" while the American Farmers are

 

providing the cleanest, most nutritious and interesting, cheapest diet the world has ever seen.

 

Organic or conventional, we all have enough to share, and needs to fill, that there should be no room for the "I hate Monsanto"

 

and the "I hate American Farmers" crowd.

 

That is all I will have to say on this subject here.

 

 

MAsteveINE

 

 

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