To answer Nathan's comment - Organic Certification doesn't protect the farmer from the government. It theoretically protects the consumer from the farmer. The whole point of certification has been to provide assurance to the consumer that the farmer who says he is providing organic food has met certain standards. The problem with the national certification system is that it has been weakened by big corporate players who want to be able to say they are "organic" with out really changing what they are doing.
I would rather build my reputation based on local knowledge. If the people who buy my produce know me and can come to my farm when ever they want, then I don't need a government program to assure them that what I produce is OK. Since I've no plan to market to anyone beyond my local area my customers should be able to get to know me.
There is a group in the Northeast who have started a certified natural program. It is more like the old style local organic certification. I may explore certifying through them, more for the grower network and advice than for the label.
If you are buying organic you really should take a hard look at where it is coming from and what organic really means for that product. Wal-mart organic isn't going to give you the same quality as local all natural. If you really are concerned with the quality of your food and the impact food production has on the environment you must get to know your food producers. Follow the whole chain from the seed to the table. Look at all the environmental impacts along the way.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Organics
People have been quizing me lately about wether or not I am going to get the farm "organicly certified" or not. I've been thinking a lot about this and have decided to not certify. I think that certification is purely ploy and not necicary for someone who markets locally. When you sell to a local market what you do is very transparent. (at least where I live. Everyone who drives by talks about all the weird things we are doing. People stop when ever they want to talk. Everyone knows someone who is related to someone who drives by our place all the time. There are no secrets.)
Besides being a marketing ploy, organic certification is not enough. I don't mean to belittle all the great work and research being done on organics and eco-agriculture. The techniques and information generated are very useful and important. However, when they are applied to our current style of farming, they will not solve the problem. Despite all the great research and innovations we are doing the same thing we have been doing for the past 10000 years - producing excess by importing resources (energy, minerals, etc.) from other places. Organics only steps us back 100 years or so. It still addresses symptoms, not causes.
I will use the best of organic techniques as well as good managed grazing and other innovations that will help me manage my land in a sane way. I will go beyond organics by marketing only my locally and drawing all needed resources from the local pool. I will return all byproducts of my production system to the land in a way that they can be recycled and used again. I do not need "certification" for this.
Besides being a marketing ploy, organic certification is not enough. I don't mean to belittle all the great work and research being done on organics and eco-agriculture. The techniques and information generated are very useful and important. However, when they are applied to our current style of farming, they will not solve the problem. Despite all the great research and innovations we are doing the same thing we have been doing for the past 10000 years - producing excess by importing resources (energy, minerals, etc.) from other places. Organics only steps us back 100 years or so. It still addresses symptoms, not causes.
I will use the best of organic techniques as well as good managed grazing and other innovations that will help me manage my land in a sane way. I will go beyond organics by marketing only my locally and drawing all needed resources from the local pool. I will return all byproducts of my production system to the land in a way that they can be recycled and used again. I do not need "certification" for this.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
A new story
Nathan said...
I can see your point about keeping everything local and networking with your community. If all my waste ends up in my own yard or in the yard of my friends, I have an incentive to be responsible with it. It sounds like you are describing a shared belief system that places a high value on living in harmony with your local eco system. If such a belief system were truly part of the culture at large it would undoubtedly have a very positive effect. I'm sorry that your brother-in-law has a hard time understanding what you are doing. I think you are light years ahead of most of us in your thinking and your actions. Thanks to some prominent national figures that have brought the environment to the fore front, more of us are now aware of these issues. You seem to eat them up with boundless energy. Most of us look on them the way we look at paying the up coming water and electric bills. "It has to be done so I guess I'll do it. Now would someone please tell me how?"
April 14, 2007 4:12 PM
The problem I see with all these high profile calls to action is that while they often succeed in raising awareness of the problem they leave us to act within the context of our 10000 year old culture/mythology. We can't fix the problem because the root of the problem lies in our cultural definition of what it means to be human. We have to live differently. To live differently we have to see ourselves in a different way. Our current mythology has us as seprate from nature. That way of thinking is embedded in our languages, in our religions, in our science, in every aspect of our global culture. Unfortunately, you can't create a new mythology and expect people to adopt it. The Story will come out of our attempts to live differently. It starts by recognizing that we are not seprate from nature. What works for all the other creatures on the planet will work for us too. We can't fix the problem with new programs. Programs come out of the old way of thinking. We need to think in a new way, and let that new way of thinking lead us to a new way of living. Try it as a mental game to start with. Look at where your food, water, and energy come from and where your waste goes. Look for choices that bring those closer to home. Look at how the rest of nature works. Look for the laws that allow complex natural systems to work. Read "Fuzzy Logic". It's a great mathematical look at the way simple rules can result in incredible complexity.
New programs frustrate me. We have programs to eliminate hunger, poverty, population explosions, environmental degradation, etc. We spend vast amounts of time, money, and energy on these programs, and they don't work. They didn't work last year. They didn't work 10 years ago. Or 30 years ago. They won't work this year, or next year. They can't because we keep acting in the same way. We keep living out the story where we are seprate from nature, and exempt from its laws. Where our measure of success is how much excess we can produce. As long as we keep living out this story our programs will fail. If we stop living out this story we wont need any programs.
I can see your point about keeping everything local and networking with your community. If all my waste ends up in my own yard or in the yard of my friends, I have an incentive to be responsible with it. It sounds like you are describing a shared belief system that places a high value on living in harmony with your local eco system. If such a belief system were truly part of the culture at large it would undoubtedly have a very positive effect. I'm sorry that your brother-in-law has a hard time understanding what you are doing. I think you are light years ahead of most of us in your thinking and your actions. Thanks to some prominent national figures that have brought the environment to the fore front, more of us are now aware of these issues. You seem to eat them up with boundless energy. Most of us look on them the way we look at paying the up coming water and electric bills. "It has to be done so I guess I'll do it. Now would someone please tell me how?"
April 14, 2007 4:12 PM
The problem I see with all these high profile calls to action is that while they often succeed in raising awareness of the problem they leave us to act within the context of our 10000 year old culture/mythology. We can't fix the problem because the root of the problem lies in our cultural definition of what it means to be human. We have to live differently. To live differently we have to see ourselves in a different way. Our current mythology has us as seprate from nature. That way of thinking is embedded in our languages, in our religions, in our science, in every aspect of our global culture. Unfortunately, you can't create a new mythology and expect people to adopt it. The Story will come out of our attempts to live differently. It starts by recognizing that we are not seprate from nature. What works for all the other creatures on the planet will work for us too. We can't fix the problem with new programs. Programs come out of the old way of thinking. We need to think in a new way, and let that new way of thinking lead us to a new way of living. Try it as a mental game to start with. Look at where your food, water, and energy come from and where your waste goes. Look for choices that bring those closer to home. Look at how the rest of nature works. Look for the laws that allow complex natural systems to work. Read "Fuzzy Logic". It's a great mathematical look at the way simple rules can result in incredible complexity.
New programs frustrate me. We have programs to eliminate hunger, poverty, population explosions, environmental degradation, etc. We spend vast amounts of time, money, and energy on these programs, and they don't work. They didn't work last year. They didn't work 10 years ago. Or 30 years ago. They won't work this year, or next year. They can't because we keep acting in the same way. We keep living out the story where we are seprate from nature, and exempt from its laws. Where our measure of success is how much excess we can produce. As long as we keep living out this story our programs will fail. If we stop living out this story we wont need any programs.
Living in a "Sustainable" world
Nathan said...
You are a farmer. Does your way forward include agriculture in some form? If so what system of checks and balances will keep you and other farmers who follow your way from producing an excess of food?NR
April 14, 2007 12:11 AM
We have always had farming of some sort. Every creature alters its environment to favor its own food supply. Ants and beavers are great examples, but if you look at the life cycle of trees you would find that they shed chemicals that prevent close competition in their own root zone, grazing animals by selecting certain plants to eat create more occurrences of those plants - the prairie was truly a creation of the buffalo. So, to answer Nathan's question, Yes, there must be some form of agriculture for us to survive.
The question of checks and balances is a good one. Who gets to be KING or GOD to decide how much to produce and who lives and who dies? We have spent the past 10000 years proving that such a system can't work. So, what's a farmer to do?
I think the key is to live locally. If I, as a farmer, only sell to a very local market and only use resources (energy, food, water, etc) from my farm or from a very local area to produce what I sell, that automatically puts a limit on how much I produce. This can't be only for the farmer. In nature everything lives locally. Every group lives on the resources available within its range. It doesn't matter what your specialty is in the group (community, tribe, pod, etc.) you live locally.
As an eco-farmer what I am trying to do is to find ways to stop importing basic resources into my operation. We have a long way to go. Right now we import all our energy, except our own labor. We import all of our water. We import most of our food. As a start we are looking at ways to reduce our energy use. We are also designing systems for the house and farm that will allow us to meet our energy needs from our own resources. We are beginning to produce our own food. Right now we produce all of our own eggs and milk, and most of the milk products we use. If spring ever gets here we will be producing most of our fresh produce. We are also seeking out and supporting local producers of things we can't or don't produce ourselves. We are also trying to deal with the "waste" produced from living. Everything that can be composted is (or it gets fed to the chickens, they eat almost anything). We recycle what we can, and chose not to buy things that aren't recyclable. We are also encouraging others to do the same. (I take eggs to my mother-in-law and she trades them for her kitchen scraps. The chickens love the scraps, and it puts some of the lost fertility back into the farm that produced the eggs as well as reducing the waste stream.) We are exploring rain catchment systems as a way to meet our water needs. And the list goes on. All of this will take time.
I am not proposing that everyone should live my life. The system wouldn't work if they did. Human groups need specialists, that is what has allowed us to adapt to so many different environments. Every time I see my brother-in-law he tells me he can't understand why I do what I do. The effort of being a farmer baffles him. I can't explain it to him. I also can't understand how anyone could do what he does. He is a dentist. The thought of spending my day with my hand in someones mouth turns my stomach. Still, I am glad there are people who specialize in dentistry, or in the thousands of other things I can't or won't do. It makes our community stronger. The key is not to have everyone become eco-farmers. The key is to have everyone take responsibility for living locally. Know where your food comes from. Find sources that are local and encourage them to use only local resources. Know where your energy and water come from. Look at ways to change how you live so you use less or produce more of your own (or both). Build networks of local people living locally. These will become the tribes, the communities of the future.
You are a farmer. Does your way forward include agriculture in some form? If so what system of checks and balances will keep you and other farmers who follow your way from producing an excess of food?NR
April 14, 2007 12:11 AM
We have always had farming of some sort. Every creature alters its environment to favor its own food supply. Ants and beavers are great examples, but if you look at the life cycle of trees you would find that they shed chemicals that prevent close competition in their own root zone, grazing animals by selecting certain plants to eat create more occurrences of those plants - the prairie was truly a creation of the buffalo. So, to answer Nathan's question, Yes, there must be some form of agriculture for us to survive.
The question of checks and balances is a good one. Who gets to be KING or GOD to decide how much to produce and who lives and who dies? We have spent the past 10000 years proving that such a system can't work. So, what's a farmer to do?
I think the key is to live locally. If I, as a farmer, only sell to a very local market and only use resources (energy, food, water, etc) from my farm or from a very local area to produce what I sell, that automatically puts a limit on how much I produce. This can't be only for the farmer. In nature everything lives locally. Every group lives on the resources available within its range. It doesn't matter what your specialty is in the group (community, tribe, pod, etc.) you live locally.
As an eco-farmer what I am trying to do is to find ways to stop importing basic resources into my operation. We have a long way to go. Right now we import all our energy, except our own labor. We import all of our water. We import most of our food. As a start we are looking at ways to reduce our energy use. We are also designing systems for the house and farm that will allow us to meet our energy needs from our own resources. We are beginning to produce our own food. Right now we produce all of our own eggs and milk, and most of the milk products we use. If spring ever gets here we will be producing most of our fresh produce. We are also seeking out and supporting local producers of things we can't or don't produce ourselves. We are also trying to deal with the "waste" produced from living. Everything that can be composted is (or it gets fed to the chickens, they eat almost anything). We recycle what we can, and chose not to buy things that aren't recyclable. We are also encouraging others to do the same. (I take eggs to my mother-in-law and she trades them for her kitchen scraps. The chickens love the scraps, and it puts some of the lost fertility back into the farm that produced the eggs as well as reducing the waste stream.) We are exploring rain catchment systems as a way to meet our water needs. And the list goes on. All of this will take time.
I am not proposing that everyone should live my life. The system wouldn't work if they did. Human groups need specialists, that is what has allowed us to adapt to so many different environments. Every time I see my brother-in-law he tells me he can't understand why I do what I do. The effort of being a farmer baffles him. I can't explain it to him. I also can't understand how anyone could do what he does. He is a dentist. The thought of spending my day with my hand in someones mouth turns my stomach. Still, I am glad there are people who specialize in dentistry, or in the thousands of other things I can't or won't do. It makes our community stronger. The key is not to have everyone become eco-farmers. The key is to have everyone take responsibility for living locally. Know where your food comes from. Find sources that are local and encourage them to use only local resources. Know where your energy and water come from. Look at ways to change how you live so you use less or produce more of your own (or both). Build networks of local people living locally. These will become the tribes, the communities of the future.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Living in harmony with natures laws
What we are trying to do is find a way to live that doesn't break the laws of nature. We, as humans, have been breaking the first law I listed for the past 10000 years or so. We can see the results. Exponential population growth and all the social effects that go with such overcrowding. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years with out ever producing such a population explosion, but our recent model of "civilization" has produced unprecedented population growth. This is a result of the philosophy behind our agriculture. The whole point of farming is to produce an excess. Excess food results in population growth. ALWAYS!
We can't go back to the way we lived 10000 years ago. We have changed the world too much (and we wouldn't want to anyway.) So, my quest is to find a way forward that doesn't break the laws of nature.
We can't go back to the way we lived 10000 years ago. We have changed the world too much (and we wouldn't want to anyway.) So, my quest is to find a way forward that doesn't break the laws of nature.
What this blog is about
Several people have asked why we are trying this eco-farm thing, and what our governing philosophy is. I've tried to explain it simply a few times, but it never comes out in a way that people quite understand. I can't down-load my brain, so I am going to try putting some of bits of my philosophy down here. Hopefully it will generate some questions and the discussion will help me flesh-out my philosophy in a more understandable way.
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