Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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6
Organic Farming in Our Future Landscape
[First Page]
[183],
(1)
Agriculture constitutes the last vestige of small-scale enterprise and widespread owner-
ship of productive assets in our society. It offers our best andmost important opportunity
fo
r environmental improvement, because we know how to produce food in far less de-
str
uctive ways than we now do. And at the bottom of the farm crisis, with broken pieces
of
the farm economy laying at our collective feet, we have the chance to pick things up
and rebuild the way we want - stronger, truer, and fairer. In agriculture we now have
a good chance to do things right. We have choices.
- Marty Strange,
Family Farming: A New Economic Vision
(1988)
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rganic farming provides ecological and social benefits, and
innovative organic farmers can be successful in agriculture
today. “The fact that organic agriculture has become com-
petitive with conventional agriculture in so many different
situations, in spite of its relatively depauperate research and
extension infrastructure, is a testament to its potential” (Lotter
20
03, 104). Looking to the future, we must support family organic farms that
ar
e good for both the earth and its people. At the same time we must ensure
th
at the popularity of organic products does not relegate organic agricul-
tu
re into the industrial model of large-scale production and corporate-
co
ntrolled distribution that hurts farm families. The best way to encourage
a transition to a family organic agricultural system is to (1) set clear and
reasonable goals for organic farming, (2) take a stand as an advocate for
organic methods, (3) conduct agroecological research that is relevant to
organic farmers, (4) establish appropriate policies at the national and state
levels that specifically target organic farmers, and (5) work to protect organic
farming from corporate interests. Luckily there are many people talking
about these same issues, so the following elaboration of these five topics
draws from diverse sources to help us chart our future course of action.
[183],
(1)
