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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] organic and scale
  • Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:56:38 -0400


On Sep 20, 2011, at 3:30 PM, Jay Sleichter wrote:

Thank you Richard for pointing out large acreage problems.  I was wondering at what scale of produce Rodale was using.  For one acre of organic verses one acre of conventional, I can see that organic would do very well.  However, IMO, organic production of grains can not be "Sized Up" to the scale of many farms here in the midwest.  300, 400 even 640 acre fields.  I don't know about you but I have a hard enough time weeding 1/2 an acre.

Jay


Rodale's grain trials are actually highly mechanized; they don't rely on hand weeding. I found a .pdf with more info about the trials (I got there through Google and can't find a good link, will try to do so later. The earlier link was to a press release type of publication, not to the trials themselves; sorry). From that:

The main plots were 18 ×92 meters 
(m),and these were split into three 6 ×92 m subplots,which 
allowed for same-crop comparisons in any one year. The 
main plots were separated with a 1.5-m grass strip to mini- 
mize cross movement ofsoil,fertilizers,and pesticides.The 
subplots were large enough that farm-scale equipment could 
be used for operations and harvesting.
 

The individual plots are not very large; this is common with multiple replication trials. Note, however, "the subplots were large enough that farm-scale equipment could be used."

I know organic field crop growers in this area with large fields for this part of the country. They may not be 640 acres; but scaling from 100 to 600 is not at all the same thing as scaling from 1/2 acre to 100. They do things very differently than I do; but I'm doing direct market fresh produce, and they've done such things as wholesaling soybeans to Japan.

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




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