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  • From: "Mark & Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Organic vs Standard Spray Programs
  • Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:52:24 -0500

Rivka wrote:

"What is or isn't "efficient" tends to depend on what's being taken into
account in the measurements. Highest yield per acre, highest yield per human
hour of labor, highest yield
per inch of topsoil loss or gain, highest yield per unit of fossil fuel
used, highest yield per total off-farm sourced inputs: these are different
types of measurement, and are likely to give different results. When you add
in to this the complications of deciding whether you want to measure
"highest yield" in terms of pounds per acre of crop, or of nutrients per
acre available in the resulting diet, or whether you want to consider in
"highest yield" benefits from the land in addition to its production of food
(water absorption, habitat for species not eaten by humans, oxygen
production, carbon absorption, et very cetera); and/or whether you want to
consider the total cost of getting the food to those who are going to eat
it, including all those who work in the supply chain and all the resources
(fuels and otherwise) that this supply chain uses; and/or if you want to
consider whether to use gross financial income to the farmer, or net
financial income to the farmer, or total gross or net income to the farmer
including any benefits to the farmer (such as the farmer's own food, fuel,
etc.) as well as cash payments: "efficiency" becomes a much harder thing to
rate."

Hi Rivka,

I was responding to your point small organic diversified farms have some
economic advantage because of less pest pressure and don't have to use
large-scale equipment. My point is that economies of scale can be so
powerful that it can make small diverse operations (even though they may
have some advantages) more difficult (not impossible) to compete. I'm not
talking about home gardens, I'm talking about those that make their living
from farming. Allow me to give an example from my own experience. When my
farming partner and I first entered the pig business several years ago, we
built a 600 sow pig farm which produced 13,000 pigs anually. The farm
supported both our families. We could have gone out and built two 300 sow
operations and produced the same amount of total pigs. However, by building
one 600 sow operation allowed us to halve a lot of our capital costs. We
only needed 2 loading chutes vs. 4. We only needed one bush hog, one blade
(to blade the road), one tractor, one irrigation reel (to irrigate the
manure on the fields) one irrigation pump, one shop, one driveway to build
and maintain, half the amount of concrete walkways between buildings, one
office, etc., etc.). I have since sold my half of the farm to my partner
and he expanded to 1200 sows further spreading out his costs over more
production. Additionally, he can now afford equipment to improve efficiency
that we may not have been able to justify before. As an example we used to
have a fairly cheap pregnacy tester ($350) to preg check the sows (sows that
are not pregnant need to be identified and watched closely for heat for
breeding (if sows are "open" they are consuming valuable resources with no
productivity)). My former partner now has a much more accurate preg tester
that costs $5000. He tells me you can actually see the fertilized embryos.
Assuming the machine lasts 5 years, it costs $1000 per year. Since he now
produces 26,000 pigs annually the cost of this machine is less than 4 cents
per pig. My point is a 50 or 100 sow farm can not justify a piece of
equipment like that, so he has a harder row to hoe.

Bringing this back to fruit, some time ago I saw a short documentary on
apples. In it, the people were pruning apple trees with self-propelled
bucket lifts and hydralic operated pruners. I thought-that's the cat's
meow. It was FAST and safe. But I know for my 1 acre place, I will never
be able to justify equipment like that. Picking and pruning with ladders is
probably my lot. So I'll probably end up working for about $5 per hour.
That's OK because at this point it's a hobby, but it would be a different
story to try to make a living at it.

One other thing, you're right a lot of agriculture is crude oil intensive,
or more accurately energy intensive. I don't know what will happen in the
future with regard to energy and how sustainable modern farming is, but I
have observed as energy prices increase, food prices seem to be increasing
in tandem, so that farmers are now doing better than they have in many
years. Additionally organic farmers may have more problems of their own in
the future. The brown apple moth was recently discovered in California. It
attacks 250 different plant species and kills young apple trees. The Med
fruit fly has been introduced before in the U.S. and has only been
eradicated through a lot of effort expense. It also attacks a wide range of
fruit crops. We won't be able to keep these pests out forever. This is
partly why our forefathers were able to grow organic fruit easier. Oriental
fruit moth wasn't introduced in the U.S. until the early 1900s. The future
has always been more pest pressure, not less.

Mark
KS




----- Original Message -----
From: Road's End Farm
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Organic vs Standard Spray Programs



On Apr 14, 2008, at 10:30 PM, Mark & Helen Angermayer wrote:


Hi Rivka,



I think you and I agree that organic probably fits best with small growers
who market their own stuff, or possibly large growers in very low pest
pressure areas. However I would disagree competition at the grocery store
is against "insipid strains of Red and Gold Delicious." That may have been
true at one time, but the consumer, at least around here has appeared to
wise up. At one of the grocers where we shop, you can't even get Red
Delicious anymore. The other carries Red Delicious, but they are always the
cheapest, and from the look of them (old and soft looking), nobody is buying
them. They have been replaced by the new more flavorful
varieties-Honeycrisp, Fuji, Pink Lady, Gala, Braeburn, and some others.


This may depend on the area. I'll just repeat that, at least in my area,
fruit in the grocery stores (all fruit, not just the apples) is in most
cases tasteless. So are most of the vegetables. My closest grocery does
carry a good deal of local produce in season, conventional produce as well
as organic, and the flavor of the local produce is generally much better;
but they're clearly selling enough of the tasteless stuff to keep carrying
it.


Now the consumer has choices, and seems to be choosing the better flavored
apples. This is going to be a challenge for the organic grower.




In my experience, in most cases the local grower has better flavored
produce, and organic often has better flavor than conventional. Local
conventional may have better flavor than organic produce that had to be
shipped long distances, however; and individual farm management may trump
the organic/conventional even in the same area: a conventional grower
concentrating on good flavor may produce better flavor than an organic
grower who isn't. But when all else is equal (a rare circumstance), I think
organic management usually produces better flavor.



One other thing on farm diversity. I'm not against it, but it can be
difficult to make it work nowadays. I'm not talking about having cattle and
row crops. That works generally because there is little capital equipment
(relatively speaking) in cattle. But real diversity, the kind our
forefathers used to practice, is quite at a disadvantage unless you can
direct market your product. The reason is many people don't realize just
how much economies of scale add to efficiency. In modern farming capital
equipment costs (driven by the high cost of labor) make up a huge piece of
the cost pie. Every time you double the yield, or amount of acres farmed,
you halve the equipment cost per output. So small operations find it harder
and harder to compete (even with the best management) with large operations
that have "built in" cost efficiencies from economy of scale.


What is or isn't "efficient" tends to depend on what's being taken into
account in the measurements. Highest yield per acre, highest yield per human
hour of labor, highest yield
per inch of topsoil loss or gain, highest yield per unit of fossil fuel
used, highest yield per total off-farm sourced inputs: these are different
types of measurement, and are likely to give different results. When you add
in to this the complications of deciding whether you want to measure
"highest yield" in terms of pounds per acre of crop, or of nutrients per
acre available in the resulting diet, or whether you want to consider in
"highest yield" benefits from the land in addition to its production of food
(water absorption, habitat for species not eaten by humans, oxygen
production, carbon absorption, et very cetera); and/or whether you want to
consider the total cost of getting the food to those who are going to eat
it, including all those who work in the supply chain and all the resources
(fuels and otherwise) that this supply chain uses; and/or if you want to
consider whether to use gross financial income to the farmer, or net
financial income to the farmer, or total gross or net income to the farmer
including any benefits to the farmer (such as the farmer's own food, fuel,
etc.) as well as cash payments: "efficiency" becomes a much harder thing to
rate.

Current prices for agricultural products in the USA are affected by the fact
that fuel here is currently significantly cheaper than labor; by the
production of large amounts of produce in arid climates in a fashion that is
draining the water tables of large parts of the country, often with water
use being charged at well under market rates (and even full market rates are
unlikely to fully reflect the damage being done, in many cases, far away
from the farms in other areas of the watershed); and, in many cases, by a
failure to include in the price to the consumer any charge for diminishment
of health of the fields, or of those who work them.

I am not saying that you yourself are harming the health of your fields, or
of the surrounding watershed, or of your workers. But the price you're
offered for your products on the overall wholesale market is affected by the
price that those who are doing so are willing to take; and the definition of
"efficiency" that most people use doesn't take any of this into account.


Modern apple producers sell their product for 10 to 20% the cost of retail.
It's going to be extremely difficult for a small producer to compete with
that pricing structure. They can only compete by selling their product
themselves. My point is that a small diversified organic farm is probably
only going to fit in niche markets. But I guess you said the same thing,
"It's not going to work for every operation."





Many conventional producers, including some quite large ones, have also gone
out of business under that pricing structure. I agree that small producers
(as well as a lot of medium-sized ones), conventional as well as organic,
are likely to do better by marketing direct to the consumer, and/or through
small co-ops, and/or direct to those local retail outlets that are still
allowed to make their own decisions as to what to buy. Considering the huge
growth in farmers' markets, CSA's, etc. over the last twenty years or so, I
disagree that such marketing, considered overall, continues to be a "niche".
Any small to medium sized business, of course, conventional or organic, farm
or other type of business, has to find its own "niche" in the sense of
finding its own customer base, and its own way to distinguish its product so
that enough customers will buy that product, as opposed to buying whatever's
cheapest at Walmart.

And no one technique is going to work for every operation. In the case of
farms, no two farms have the same resource base in the terms of the specific
farm size, layout, soils, soil conditions, water availability, climate,
microclimates; or in the terms of the available capital and accumulated
equipment; or in terms of available labor, from the farm family or
otherwise, and of the actual capabilities of the people providing that
labor; or, most especially, in terms of the specific farmer(s) running the
place. Each of us has to decide how to allocate those resources that we
have. Somebody who loves hand work in the fields is going to decide
differently than someone who loves working with machinery (and there are
some highly mechanized organic farms). Somebody who loves working with
people and doing sales is going to decide differently than someone who hates
this. The farmer is part of the farm. I am not going to try to decide for
you how you ought to run your farm (not that you would listen to me if I
did!)

The sun is out, the fields are drying enough to work in, and I should quit
going on on this subject for a while (and, as you have no doubt noticed, I
am quite capable of going on. And on.)

Yours en route to finish getting ready to plant onions, parsley, and
strawberries --

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly



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