Organic v. Nearly Organic - Warning - Long

Before you start reading, be warned. This is going to be a bit long, is full of personal opinons, and will possibly annoy a few of you. But it's been on my mind for a few days.

I recently talked to my father up in Maine. After verifiying that he was alive and well, that the Hurricane had not killed him or anyone we knew, and after a couple of anecdotes were exchanged, we started talking about gardens, food, and government - as we have a tendency to do.

In the process of our discussion, I found out that a couple friends of the family were going to have to either stop selling the food that they made, or figure out a way to do it VERY differently. Problem is, they were organic farmers - small scale only and not 100% organic.

Essentially, they had three 100X100 foot plots that they would grow on. During any given year two were producing food and one was covered with buckwheat as a cover crop, to let it rest. I've been to the farm and can testify that they grew some of the richest, most beautiful, tasty and amazing vegetables and fruits you can imagine. The soil is black and smells like what earth should smell like.

As part of how they grow things, they get horse manure filled hay from a nearby friend, sawdust from another friend, and chicken manure from yet another friend. All these things are received from bartering - some produce in trade for the products that would probably go to waste anyway.

Naturally, there is a ton of food that comes out of this garden set up, so they have been making a living for several years by selling the produce to high end restaurants. This worked great as they could get a good price for the food, and the restaurants could make some seriously delicious meals.

Unfortunately, this may all go downhill.

The restaurants are now demanding an organic food system because that is what the customers want. However, our friends cannot get an organic certification because they cannot guarantee that their stuff is organic. It costs a LOT more to get certified organic seeds, to start. In and of itself, that wouldn't be a big deal as they are already old hands at saving seeds, but there are other factors:

- The surrounding lands are not growing organically, so there is some inevitable contamination - usually from a little drift of pesticide or whatever. They do have a tree break between their land and the neighbors, but that is not a guarantee.
- In order to grow organically and sell according to the rules, they need to get a ridiculous amount of insurance, because they are not using the very things that people are wanting them to avoid.
- The wonderful manure sources are not certified organic. The chickens get some regular grain feed, the horses eat whatever they are fed, and while the sawdust does come from a lumber area, it's also 'contaminated' with dirt from the same area.

So, this brings up the question I have been wondering about - Is Organic really Worth it?

We all want to support our local and organic operations. I get that. But I keep thinking about the wonderful little farm that they have, and about how I would rather eat stuff from there - even with the bit of pesticide that might hit it - than picking up the same produce from Whole Foods even if it's been certified. I keep thinking about how the sawdust that they get might have a drop or two of oil in it because the truck that is used is older than I am, but how it makes huge and delicious potatoes and rutabaga. I'm thinking about those chickens that provide the manure, who eat grain that has whatever it is that is in laying mash that makes the chickens lay more. I'm thinking about the blackberries they get from a patch that also has wild deer running through it (lots of diseases there, right?), that they occasionally will toss ashes on - which have been produced by burning stuff like magazines and toilet paper along with the usual amount of wood that gets burned over a winter in Maine.

Organic is a lovely concept, but these people can't do it in the way that it is regulated. Attempting to meet regulations that do nothing to take into account what is happening when someone is doing the best they can, but are living with what they are given, will kill this farm. They can't even sell from a roadside stand (legally) without the mandatory payment to the protection racket (insurance).

What is someone like this supposed to do? They cannot be the only growers that hit that median between organic and non-organic. They lean on the mostly organic side of things, but they do tip their toes into the stream of "conventional" - mostly by accident. What is someone like this supposed to do?

And yes, they are working with the restaurants that they have supplied in the past, to try to get past the organic desire. But one of the very things that anyone who wants sustainability wants, is the very thing that is hurting people that live like my friends do.