Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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of the soil,” so spraying pesticides only treats “the effect, not the cause”
(Walters and Fenzau 1996, xii). Organic farming means using “beneficials”
- beneficial insects such as ladybugs that destroy the bad bugs like aphids,
and beneficial interplanting of certain plants to keep pests away (Lamp-
kin 1990). It means unique farm management decisions in terms of crop
choice, planning, harvesting, and marketing (Gaskell et al. 2000). It means
marketing through distinct channels - farmers must work hard to identify
and maintain their sales outlets, often selling to numerous wholesalers, to
brokers, or directly to consumers (Lampkin andPadel 1994).Marketing their
farm products sometimes takes as much time as growing them, as organic
farmers are trying to gain back the farmer's share of the customer's food dol-
lar (decreasing from40 percent in 1910 to only 10 percent today, according to
Magdoff et al. 2000) by marketing directly to consumers. Organic farming
also means diversity - growing a large number of crops both for ecological
diversity and for sales diversity; not putting all your crops in one basket,
so to speak (Newton 2002). It means independence - staying outside the
mainstream industrial agricultural system as much as possible. And most
certainly, it means innovation - trying new crop rotations or varieties or
timing, trying new machinery (that they probably build themselves), and
trying new sales venues to meet consumers' demands.
The term
certified organic
is important because it signifies a specific
process of certification that has been regulated by the United States De-
partment of Agriculture's National Organic Certification Standards since
2002. Accredited by the USDA, various state and regional certifying agencies
(described later in this chapter) act to verify the fieldmethods employed and
to document the organic farming processes found on each farm. Farmers
must forego synthetic agrichemicals for three consecutive years; they must
maintain detailed farm histories; they must document every input to their
fields; they must have an annual inspection by an outside inspector; and
they must show that they are building their soil through rotation and use
of green manure (crops planted and plowed under to fertilize the soil).
This topic celebrates organic farmers and seeks to encourage broader
acceptance of certified organic systems as part of a sustainable agricultural
system. Organic farming, by going mainstream, could provide a unifying
theme for the sustainability movement (
Nature
2004), which in turn could
help promote genuine organic methods based on family organic farms.
There is strength in numbers, and together we could create a sustainable
future through ecologically sound landscapes and viable rural communities;
this begins with educated consumers.
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