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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Sustainability/Profitability of organic production
  • Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:28:45 -0400


On Sep 20, 2011, at 8:42 AM, Wiediger, Alison wrote:

I never thought I would see the day that mainstream ag would take such a serious look at organic production.  Interesting times…


It has been an interesting progression. I remember picking up the phone in the late 1970's and calling Extension to ask for advice on growing organic grapes. The voice on the other end of the phone said "It's not possible to grow grapes organically." I said goodbye, hung up the phone, and didn't call Extension up again for about ten years; during which time I grew organic grapes.

I remember, also, going to a small fruit day at Cornell in the late 80's. There was a raspberry variety trial, with ripe raspberries. Someone asked if it was all right to eat them, to check for flavor (if they'd been intending to weigh the crop for comparison, or if they'd been trialing not yet labeled pesticides on them, eating some would have been a bad idea.) The presenter said they were OK to eat. He said that they had not been sprayed at all, because one of the purposes of the trial was to judge comparative resistance; and then added, with some puzzlement, that they had expected lots of disease and insect problems, but as we could all see the plants were healthy and producing good clean fruit.

Cornell now has its own organic trial farms, and routinely now gives out advice for both organic and conventional farming techniques.


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




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