Market Farming

[Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>]

On Feb 5, 2011, at 1:26 PM, Joe Tittiger wrote:

> Heirlooms for the most part is the most nutritious so why would  
> anyone buy hybrids owned by Monsanto or anyone else?
> Don't you grow  food mostly for the nutrition and taste?   Anyhow I  
> am surprised to see that it is even an issue with anyone.

I grow a number of heirlooms, and save seed of several myself. However:

1) I'm going to get very little nutrition or taste from a variety that  
just plain doesn't produce. Sometimes the variety that produces well  
in this location is a hybrid -- sometime the OP versions are too  
disease susceptible and/or not early enough.

2) Nutrition and taste are both affected by a lot of factors. A  
variety that tastes great grown in one place may be no good at all  
grown somewhere else, even in the same general areas. Not all  
heirlooms or all open pollinated varieties (while all heirlooms are  
OP's, not all OP's are heirlooms) taste good grown here, and some  
hybrids taste excellent. Determining nutritional differences between  
varieties grown in a particular spot can be very difficult -- I can  
hardly afford to have hundreds of tests done every year. Some modern  
varietes have been bred for high nutritional values, though often of  
one or two specific nutrients only.

3) Customers often want specific things. I have some customers who  
want a tomato that looks like the one in the grocery store. While I'm  
unwilling to grow anything as tasteless as what's in the grocery, and  
therefore insist on getting good flavor along with standard looks, I  
think I stand a much better chance of educating these customers by  
starting them on something they're willing to buy. If I can get them  
used to buying from me, I'm then in a better position to try talking  
them into trying heirlooms; and, even if they won't, if I can grow  
something that does please them I'll still have them as customers.

Therefore, I take a lot of things into account when deciding what  
varieties to plant. Nutrition and taste are high on the list; I favor  
open pollinated varieties when possible, if only because if they  
disappear from the market I may have some faint hope of producing seed  
myself; source of seed is also an issue for me. However, yield,  
earliness, disease resistance, and what the customers want to buy have  
to be considered also.


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