Freshman Farmer | New Organic Farms Set Roots

Wait, what?!

June 5th, 2010
Coyote House Farm | Blog

This is incredible. It used to be that eating organic vs. conventional was good for taste, lower carbon footprint, support of local economies, and encapsulating the total cost of ownership in the purchase. But conventional agriculture is vulnerable to weak regulation and can very dangerous to eat. Methyl iodide is s…o nasty it is used to cause cancer in laboratory animals. If you have cancer in your family, you want to stay far back from this. What are the$e people thinking?

Click here.

Tags: strawberries, Methyl iodide, pesticide

3 Responses to “Wait, what?!”

EtienneG Says:

Jun 8th, 2010 at 8:21 am

Wow. Now I’m really scared.

What really baffle me is that we, organic farmers and gardeners everywhere, spend so much effort building up our soil ecosystem and food web, when some conventional ones would be willing to spread a known carcinogenic to do exactly the opposite: to sterilize the soil. That just goes on to show how diametrically opposed the views are.

Between organic and *that*, I know which strawberries I would prefer to eat. I assume just about everybody would too. We need to spread the word. Facebook’ed.

Drew Says:

Jun 8th, 2010 at 9:52 am

Precisely! We’re converting select parts of our clay-rich pasture land into living soil with huge amounts of compost. Dan and I were overjoyed to see earthworms crawling around in our rows. For someone to go and kill it all and replace it with an incomplete idea of nutrients is hard to watch.

I get that they are going for scale. Agriculture is a low margin business, especially on the non-value-added product level, and profits are made up on the volume. But the compromises that are made along the way endanger the value of the product and the people who use it.

The fact that this decision can get this far makes me nervous for what else I am blissfully ignorant of.

EtienneG Says:

Jun 9th, 2010 at 6:43 am

Yeah, but I wonder: if ones is to treat the soil as an inert substrate to anchor roots and hold nutrients, why not go to the logical end and just do hydroponic? If the answer is “cost”, that’s terribly cynical to use a carcinogenic to sterilize the soil.

In any case, more ammo for us organic growers!

Three farms are starting from scratch.

They are turning the dirt and hoping to be successful enough to turn a profit, and to become a valuable part of their communities as suppliers of organically grown food.

Peaceful Valley is giving them a head start by offering them special pricing as part of this Freshman Farmer program.

The Farm Blogs

Freshman:
New Farms Coming Soon!
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