Organic farming

Organic farming is now showing up on the radar screen of industrial agriculture, after years of being ridiculed. Of course, this is inevitable now that organic sales in the U.S. are approaching $11 billion per year. But it is a mixed bag. On the one hand, we have been haranguing conventional farmers to get off the chemical bandwagon for years.

Now that the lure of organic premiums is making some of them give it a try, we should be glad, right? Well, on the other hand, organic markets are somewhat fragile, and can easily be overwhelmed, leaving us in the same low-price trap that conventional commodity production has been in for years.

There is, however, a deeper issue here than which chemicals are used or not used on an organic farm. If we can address this deeper issue, we can protect both the integrity of organic farming and our organic markets.

Maine leads the nation with more than 10 percent of the state's dairies, 50 of 420, now producing organic milk. The nation's two largest organic dairy producers are Organic Valley, based in La Farge, Wisconsin, and Horizon Organic Dairy, based in Boulder, Colorado. Both sell milk nationally, unlike Radiance, which refuses to sell even regionally. More about that later.

Now that organic farming is coming into vogue, a whole new breed of farmers is taking up organic production. They often approach organic production as just another specialty crop. The result is an increasing emphasis on farming by "input substitution." That means substituting conventional farming inputs with inputs that are approved for organic production, rather than using an array of cultural and biological practices to build soils, control pests and grow nutritious, productive crops--as had been the tradition in organic farming.

Another approach common among farmers who see organic production as a specialty crop is farming by "neglect." That means "organic farming" using neither any inputs nor any additional cultural or biological farming practices. The result, not surprisingly, is decreasing yields and increasing weed and pest pressures. These farmers usually give up "organic" production in a few years, convinced that it doesn't work.

Is organic farming by input substitution or by neglect really organic farming? Technically, yes, by today's working definitions, but not really, by the standards of traditional organic farmers.

As an aside, it is not surprising that studies comparing the nutritional value of organic and conventionally grown food are inconclusive. Clearly, that is because a lot of "organic" food is essentially "conventionally" grown--by input substitution or neglect methods.

It is not likely to be nutritionally different from conventional food because it is grown under conditions that mimic conventional production. I suspect, however, that if we were to test food grown on an organic farm that utilized generous amounts of green manure and compost in comparison with food from an NPK conventional farm, the organic food would be found to be superior in taste and nutritional value.

Some people think organic gardening in Oregon is a whole lot different than organic gardening any place else. Well that is just not true. People in Oregon face the same problems as people else where. Granted organic gardening in Oregon will not be the same as organic gardening in Florida, but the principles will be the same.