Naturally Interesting

Michigan State University professor Philip Howard has documented the tangled web that are organic products today.

Have fun seeing who owns your favorite organic brand. The same sort of chart can be found here too.

The author of this NYT piece explains how the government is actively preventing him from producing local, organic foods. He had 100 acres of his own and rented 25 more from a neighboring farm. Then learned he was in trouble because he was growing produce on commodity land.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

And here’s the kicker:

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

The author contends that large producers of fruits and vegetables in California and Florida want to stop small, local organics, and so actively lobby congress for just such absurd results as these.

The bottom line: The commodity program actively inhibits the production of local fruits and vegetable so that American taxpayers can subsidize commodity production that benefits ($$$) ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, large meat producers, etc… Consider this - meat is very expensive to grow, you have to feed it corn grown by other farmers, give it antibiotics, raise it, transport it, slaughter it. Tomatoes - you stick them in the ground and give them a some water.  So did you ever wonder why a pound of tomatoes can be nearly expensive as a pound of beef? One part of the answer is we heavily subsidize beef production, the obesity causing, environmentally damaging food. We don’t subsidize those nice healthy, environmentally friendly tomatoes.

According to Agronomy Journal

Can organic cropping systems be as productive as conventional systems” The answer is an unqualified, “Yes” for alfalfa or wheat and a qualified “Yes most of the time” for corn and soybeans according to research reported by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and agricultural consulting firm AGSTAT in the March-April 2008 issue of Agronomy Journal.

Good news since one of the major arguments for conventional and GMO crops is increased productivity.

Link

Find out here