The comments on my Tuesday posting (at least, the ones I didn’t delete; more on that below) had me recalling a conversation I had with the owner of a large family-run farm stand outside Boston that has evolved into a large fruit and vegetable market.
He recalled that when his family decided to build the farm stand in the late 1940s (rather than just sell produce to distributors), one of the ways the stand established itself was to deliver eggs and produce to area residents. He recalled making those deliveries as a boy…until the supermarkets established themselves in the suburbs, and most people opted out of the specialized deliveries in favor of “convenience.” Then his market had to compete with the supermarkets, which it has done quite well by emphasizing quality (and not giving much attention to the “organic” label).
I can recall as late as the 1970s, having a “chicken man” and “egg man” make deliveries to our home outside Boston. It was the guarantee of quality in the context of an ongoing relationship that was meaningful—in the days before I even knew what organic meant.
I think the “organic” concept did two things for me in recent years: first, it made me feel as if I had some “insurance” against receiving produce with pesticides; second, it enabled me to question farmers and not feel as stupid as I might otherwise have felt, having in the meantime become so disconnected from farming.
It’s this second benefit that has been especially important. As a city guy insecure in his knowledge about agriculture, it didn’t seem right to ask a farmer, “Hey, did you spray this spinach with pesticide?” Much more comfortable to ask, “Excuse me, is this organic?”
But having read the comments emphasizing the primacy of the buy-local idea, I realize that most owners of small farms have no more interest in using pesticides than I have in eating produce sprayed with pesticides. They pretty much operate with an attitude that they want to grow for customers products that they feel good about consuming themselves.
I also sense that the various food-contamination outbreaks we’ve seen will accelerate the trend toward buying local. Organic methods then are only one part of a larger equation.
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A couple of updates:
–Greg Niewendorp tells me he has a date with the Charlevoix County prosecutor tomorrow (Friday) to discuss the legality of Michigan’s bovine tuberculosis program. Greg says that Michigan’s Animal Industry Act provides counties, portions of counties, even individual farms, with exemption from the program if they’ve not had a positive test for three years. He’s not had one the previous five years, he says.
He also says he’s been told by the county sheriff to expect that warrant for testing his cattle to be served early next week. “How’s that going to work if I don’t cooperate?” he asks. “Are they going to throw me in jail?”
–Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. says in a comment following my posting about Susan Smith yesterday that California’s Department of Food and Agriculture is after him about the brightness of the inside of his silo. I guess when you’re working for the state don’t have to worry about where your next paycheck is coming from, you have time to be creative.
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Here’s some more followup on yesterday’s note concerning my inadvertent deletion of a few comments. Aside from the loss of the comments (the blog service says they can’t be retrieved), the biggest risk is that those who posted the comments will wind up on the blog service’s “blocked” list. In other words, any other comments they make won’t be posted.
If your comment is blocked (you’ll usually see a blank screen after you try to post, or you’ll receive a message that your comment was blocked), the best thing to do is to find your computer’s “IP address”. Once you have it, email it to me (david@davidgumpert.com) and I’ll send it to the blog service so your computer is taken off the blocked list. A few people have alerted me that they encountered problems, and I see from her comment that Lynn McGaha had difficulty making her comment stick to Tuesday’s posting. Generally, if you are able to post a comment somewhere, you aren’t being targeted for blockage. But if blockage happens a couple times, send me the IP address. Here are instructions for obtaining your IP address from a Windows computer (On Apple computers, you look for TCP/IP, I am told):
Of course, those three are intertwined such that one tends to promote the other.
(And by the way, what sort of journalist airs his insecurities honestly as David just did? Well… a good one, as the readers of this blog can certainly attest.)
p.s. Buy local!
This city girl has no problem asking,"Did you use pesticides/herbacides on this? And did you give this meat vaccinations?Hormones?What was in the feed they ate? As comsumers it is out right ot ask and to know what we are purchasing.