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Thread: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    (snip)"IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

    But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

    As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

    Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.

    All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

    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.

    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.)

    In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

    In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

    Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.

    That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg. "(snip)

  2. #2
    God/dess whirlerz's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    Wow, that sucks, Mel. Sorry to hear about that.


    MANY MEN WANTED TO LAY ME DOWN, BUT FEW WANTED TO LIFT ME UP

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    God/dess Corgan's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...


  4. #4
    BrunetteGoddess
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    It's just not right

  5. #5
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    That is TOTAL bullshit. I only get my produce from farmer's markets and local produce stands - been that way for at least a year or two - and I always wondered why it was so much cheaper and tastier than the grocery store produce. I guess that's why. I can't believe we're letting farmers get shafted this way! FARMERS! They've got to be the most important business owners in America and we're fucking them over?

  6. #6
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    BTW, anyone who cares about what they eat would be interested in , along the same lines.

    An excerpt (more at link):

    Granted, not everyone can or wants to raise their own food. I guess as a farmer, that's good for my business, but I do want them to to care, to take part in the decision of what they eat and how it is grown. Just as it is wrong for the corporate media to only offer part of the news, it is also wrong for the corporate food industry to basically say "shut up
    and eat".

    When nearly 75% of the U.S. market spinach crop is grown in one valley in California and repeated bacterial contaminations ensue, we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

    When millions of pounds of beef are recalled due to bacterial contamination and when, by the count of the Centers for Disease Control 73,000 cases of e-coli infection and 63 deaths occur in the U.S. each year, we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

    When the World Health Organization tells us that in the U.S. some 60% of the adults and nearly 13% of the children are obese, we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

    When scientists from around the world tell us the vitamin and mineral content of our food has fallen significantly over the past 60 years, we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

    When groundwater nitrate levels climb year after year because industrial size farms raise too many animals producing too much manure on too little land, we must, question the industrial concentration of our food system.

    When the World Health Organization blames the increase of infectious diseases in part on the "industrialization of the animal production sector" and the emergence of H5N1 (Avian Flu) on "intensive poultry production", again we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

    We are told this is the safest food system in the world, but is it? Is high tech, high production, industrialized agriculture the way to feed he world? It seems not, millions still starve, the U.S. is obese and we still have tainted food.

  7. #7
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    I can't believe we're letting farmers get shafted this way! FARMERS! They've got to be the most important business owners in America and we're fucking them over?
    well, it's only SOME farmers that are getting shafted. Other farmers are happily riding the gov't subsidy 'gravy train'. The distinction of course seems to involve the particular political climate of the state the farmers are living in, and whether those farmers are part of a 'corporate food chain' or independents. Again, like corn ethanol subsidies, it would appear that general farm subsidies also have a lot more to do with attracting needed votes in certain states than with the production of low cost high quality food !

  8. #8
    Banned Eric Stoner's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/op...f01&ei=5087%0A

    (snip)"IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

    But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

    As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

    Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.

    All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

    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.

    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.)

    In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

    In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

    Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.

    That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg. "(snip)
    We can thank FDR and the New Deal for injecting government into farming and succeeding administrations for perpetuating it.

  9. #9
    TheSexKitten
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    No wonder all the foods we eat come from one big oligarchy of companies.

  10. #10
    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    I think it is a matter of subsidies gone wild. There comes a time when those incentives move from doing good to becoming prisons.

    The farmer could ignore the welfare incentive and simply allow food to be planted as is and leave behind the safety net.

    But we need to consider, that one night of frost can destroy that crop and they (and we) are screwed.

    What I think we are angry about, is that farming is becoming more and more a relic of central planning - and less and less of the free market which we tend to assume always lowers prices.

    Frankly, I think there is going to be a time when food prices provide more of an incentive to planting than government planning does.

  11. #11
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: and you wonder why organic produce is so expensive ...

    Frankly, I think there is going to be a time when food prices provide more of an incentive to planting than government planning does
    perhaps, but that development is contingent on A. joe sixpack actually being able to pay those high prices with real money, and B. the gov't refraining from enacting price controls on foods in order to prevent riots in the street.

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