Food Fight » Organic » The Ump
"As the number of organic soybean producers has increased worldwide, U.S. producers have faced increased competition for the domestic market," concludes Catherine Greene, USDA economist and lead author of the USDA report.

"Increased competition" is a euphemism for racketeering. I'll assume that foreign organic soy bean producers are indeed organic. And I'll assume that they charge a lot less than their American counterparts. Basically it comes down to the buyer holding a loaded gun to the American farmers head and asking them to commit financial suicide.

This is what the USDA calls competition. The goal is simple: drive the American organic soy bean farmer out of business, take over their farms and grow crops conventionally.

Did you ever wonder why organic foods costs more than their conventional foods? Did you know that conventional farmers have a much higher overhead? It's because they rely on chemicals to grow the food. Conventional farming costs a lot more than organic farming. The Farm Bill makes up the difference.

Each year the Farm Bill gets renewed. Farmers drive their tractors to DC to lobby their local representatives. It's the one time of the year that you'll see more overalls on Capitol Hill than suits.

I'm making that up except that the Farm Bill does get renewed each year. Small family farms see the smallest amounts, while BigAg gets bigger and bigger amounts.

BigAg then undercuts organic farmers via a price war that amounts to legal taking of farmland. Conventional, chemically farmed food can be sold more cheaply than organic foods even though organic food is cheaper to produce.

There is no incentive for a small farmer to start an organic farm. The only thing you and I can do about it is  

Compost

Compost is the best recycler of biological wastes, turning millions of tons of our refuse into a food-growing asset.

Sunday September 05, 2010

Moon Phase Calendar RSS Sunflower icon


Books

Can't live without them. Check your local library first to see if they have these: The Compleat Squash | The Heirloom Tomato | Seed to Seed | Seed Savers books | The Rodale Book of Composting
Clicky Web Analytics