Hope you decide to stay. I share your desire to grow organically and think that I mostly do so. Please share your ideas. Bill
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That just depends on what people want to buy and are willing to pay for, right? To the extent people believe in and value organic principles (or labels or however you want to define your question) enough to pay the cost of production (including, possibly, growing it themselves) then the market will grow. The way much of organic farming operates now it will be very difficult to expand beyond a small fraction, though, because lots of organic farms currently depend heavily on waste products (manure, blood meal, feather meal, etc.) from conventional farms to meet their fertilizer needs, and that system only works when organic farms are a very small fraction, especially on an acreage basis.
I don’t necessarily believe that, at least not in the sense that people just can’t afford it. Most American families find plenty of money for eating out and for processed foods that are just as extravagant from a dollar perspective as most organic food if not even more so. And Americans spend plenty of money on other non-necessities (new/fashionable clothing, automobiles that go way beyond meeting utilitarian transportation needs, houses that go way beyond utilitarian needs for shelter, cigarettes/pot/alcohol/coffee, cable television, televisions, air conditioning, pets…) I’m not saying everyone should take vows of poverty, just that how people spend money beyond an extreme-vow-of-povery-level involves lots of options and choices for how to spend the excess. Americans, especially, could prioritize food and how it was grown a whole lot more if they wanted to. Sure, there would be trade-offs, but that’s true of most everything. I don’t mean to comment on whether most Americans should make those trade-offs for organic food or not, just that they could.
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I disagree. In my experience, the “middle class/higher class populations” are more educated. Those with higher education in liberal arts tend to buy heavy into “organic labeled” produce but the rest have zero qualms with “chemical” methods.
The price here is currently $1.29 / pound.
That may be true, but any study on the subject I’ve seen show much steeper prices in general for organic produce and other food goods- prices that even far exceed the extra production costs. In the west there is often a glut of organic apples but somehow Whole Foods manages to charge premium prices on pretty much all the fruit they sell in most of the country.
My sister lives just north of Eureka and organic growers that sell at her farmers market get $4 a pound for peaches and nectarines. When I used to attend the Santa Monica farmers market when my father was alive that price was about typical there as well as I recall. I’m glad they can get the price. No small farmer can long succeed on selling organic fruit for $1.29 a pound.
For some people it is just a choice. Fruits & Vegetables are treated as a commodity by most people in US. They just want the cheapest source, the quality is not important to them.
Americans spend the least amount of their income on food compared to all the other countries in the world.
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that’s an unusual and sweeping hypothesis Richard. The intriguing implication to it is that the ‘more educated’ folks which you typify as the middle class and higher class populations are actually in agreement(penny-wise), with the lower class, since the folks who use foodstamps dont go to whole foods or trader joe’s.
not sure what demographic the liberal arts majors belong to, though
not that it matters, because if you’re right, then everybody should get along well, since the liberal arts majors are getting what they want and are happily catered to by a rapidly growing sector of the industry, while the other sector-- the conventional farmers, they will still have the poor, the middle class, and the higher class as customers.
everyone’s getting along in this thread, is that right?
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As a small commercial grower of Apples, Peaches, Blackberries and Blueberries selling to the local market, my only obligation is to grow quality fruit that customers will purchase, comply with the label requirements of any chemicals that I use, and to make a satisfactory profit so that I can continue. Why would I want to spend a lot of money on chemicals if I could grow good quality fruit without the expense of the chemicals?
I would love to pocket the money that I spend on chemicals to produce marketable tree fruit, but in my climate, I would not have any fruit that folks would purchase.
For more than 20 years, we produced and sold blueberries and blackberries without spraying the fruit. The introduction of SWD made that impossible. Fruit maggots (SWD) in small fruit is a good way to loose customers forever and go broke. At this point in time. the only solution to the SWD problem is to spray the fruit.
We only spray when necessary, largely based on insect counts in monitoring traps. We select the chemical that targets the primary pest and preserves as many beneficials as possible. I’m not convinced ORMI approved “organic” insecticides are better for the environment or safer than conventional chemicals.
Climate has a huge impact on insects and disease. More than 3/4 of all organic apples grown in this country are grown in a very dry climate. Organic apples are common in Washington state, but very rare in NC.
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i totally understand. If i were a fruit farmer in your region, i’d be doing the same exact thing to keep my investment(my trees) free from pests to safeguard my livelihood for as long as i could. Even many posters here who grow fruits for home consumption use pesticides, as they have no other choice. Quite painful to nurture trees for many months until trees fruits are about ready, only to be ruined by diseases or pests which could have been thwarted by pesticides. Even more tragic would be the years it took nurturing trees until they’ve attained full production, only to die en masse as a result of pests/diseases! Pesticides are an unavoidable evil in that case, an outright evil due to production costs for the farmer, plus the pervading evil casting this constant atmosphere of doubt not just for the farmer formulating and spraying the pesticides, but also for the consumers. Nobody wants it, but no one in such regions could do away with it.
much like my ddt-industrialization analogy, pesticides are still a necessary evil in many cases. Where the pros exceed the cons
the issue here seems to be that the luckier folks in west coast with relatively low pest-pressures and excellent climates, particularly california, have it so good that any comment they post about “pulling it off” could be a source of friction.
The “necessity” of spraying pesticides in the Southeast and high insect/disease pressure areas is sometimes exaggerated. I’ve already described the limited success I’ve had with my own (and seen from neighbors’) apple trees, but there are a lot of other fruits with which neither pests nor diseases have been a significant problem for me at all: blueberries – even though I’m not at all far from blueberrythrill, if I’ve had any problems with fruit maggots they’ve been so minor that I can’t remember them – figs, native and Asian persimmons, pawpaws, muscadines, hardy kiwis, fuzzy kiwis, jujubes, mulberries, sour cherries, satsumas (with protection from the cold on the coldest winter nights)… I also have high hopes but haven’t yet fruited che fruit, cornelian cherries, or pomegranates (although they may get knocked back on the colder than average winters). And then I get plenty of perfectly good strawberries, watermelons, and cantaloupes, all of which I’m able to grow well enough to sell. I’d gladly take all those fruits over the assortment of fruits most Americans eat in a year. In any case, one could certainly be content with the assortment of no-spray fruits I can grow with no significant problems that I’d even think about spraying for even if I were tempted to spray. And then European and Asian pears have, all in all, done about as well for me as apples – all completely no-spray – which is to say I’ve had very substantial losses and problems, but I’ve been able to enjoy some very nice pears along the way, too. Blackberries have also had notable problems, but in the best years I’ve put all the blackberries my family could eat in the freezer and sold extras. Stone fruit (besides sour cherries) has been nearly a complete failure, but late freezes have been such a problem with stone fruit that I mostly haven’t gotten far enough that spraying could have made any difference anyway.
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Oh that’s true :). Even the Whole Foods market 10 miles from here in Leucadia charges in excess of $4 / lb for NOP apples. But … they are in a “Riviera” coastal town ($4M/house). Elsewhere, the prices for the same fruit are much more moderate.
So she is in Arcata or McKinleyville CA, whose economy is 90% driven by Humboldt State University. Sure, retailers there can exact outrageous sums for products from students and professors. I lived there for 6 years.
The clientele of that market includes many a Hollywood personality and other well-healed folks including my uncle from Santa Monica Canyon. Sure the prices are high there. I used to supply plants (veggie and herb starts) to one of the sellers. They were happy to buy them at $60 / flat of 16 4" pots!
I appreciate your opinion, but the reality is that a large number of small farmers (40-400 acres) do. It does require expert knowledge on cost effective means of producing a good crop while meeting the NOP requirements.
Let’s break the “pest-pressure” down a bit.
In several places of “west coast”, there is less disease pressure than the frigid NW and humid areas of the East and South.
In the very temperate portions of the west, there is heightened insect pest pressure unparalleled anywhere else in the U.S. with the likely exception of southern-most FL and tropical territories.
I love your entrepreneurial spirit towards fruit production!
Not to sound defensive, but doesn’t your experience validate the difficulties of growing fruit and vegetables in the south east? Yes, fruit trees with high pest and disease resistance will do well, but as you descend the pyramid of disease resistance from apples to stone fruit you lose more of your potential crop. That’s fine if you are simply growing for your own pleasure, but it’s a different story if you are trying to grow anything on a commercial scale - even more so if you attempt to grow anything remotely vulnerable to disease and pest pressure.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that you can’t grow “no spray” apples in parts of the southeast, but you are going to have smaller yields. Your yields will certainly not look anything like those from no soray apples on the west coast.
To be fair, I worry less about “spraying” than the actual sprays being used and how they break down in the environment and in the human body. I know that in my garden I just cannot harvest greens without spraying BT at certain parts of the year. My yields would also be signicantly smaller if I did not spray spinosad at strategic times on vulnerable plants - not to mention a copious amount of row covers and general fretting about SVB, etc., but I also know the negative effects of the above are essentially zero to my family and minimal to pollinators when properly applied.
In the grand scheme of things I am more concerned about soil erosion, ground water mining, and fertilizer run off than I am of sprays on my produce.
There is no PC west of the Rocky Mountains. They are probably the only reason other than brown rot that I will do anything but full organic.
Has the west coast been affected by BMSB or Japanese Beetles? Those two have been a pain in my garden above and beyond any ther pest.
I’m not sure if home orchardists are aware: the main barrier to USDA NOP (organic) certification is not choice of pesticides, but choice of fertilizers.
We have other nasty things that feast year-round on plants.
:[quote=“Richard, post:111, topic:8054”]
but the reality is that a large number of small farmers (40-400 acres) do
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You are right in regards to small farmers with 40-400 acres. My farm is 3 acres and I bet there are far more farms in this country now between my size and 10 acres than those small farms you are talking about. Many in the professional classes all over the country are beginning to attend farmers markets where this “new type” (or very old type) of direct to market farming is being done. The products of such farms are also being sold to chefs in fine restaurants.
However, I’m speaking without data and I’m not even a “full time farmer” as the trees I grow only represent a portion of my income as far as the actual sale of the trees- much of my income comes from tending the trees after they are planted and big old apple trees that were already there. But I am talking about the small farmers that sell directly to the public- whatever their percentage of “small farmers” in this country over all.
Most of the members of this forum that are farming for money are doing so within the context I speak- direct marketing to the customers for a premium price. I even have clients that have small farms as a side line and for tax deferment that are doing the same thing with vegetables- covering their labor expenses by charging premium prices with direct sales to the consumer.
I would be interested in any data you have at your fingertips about the percentage of the nation’s food that is produced by small farmers that sell to whole- salers. All I ever read is about how such farms are being bought out by larger and larger producers.
Thats awesome what you are doing and good to hear you have a market. I think the relatively uncommon nature of figs, mulberries etc in markets scares people from growing them for sale.
You should try some fuzzy kiwis, they should be no-brainers in your climate. I find them more popular with people than my hardy ones.
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I do think that as a country we will probably move toward eating more of the kind of fruit that can be grown in our regions with limited pesticide/fertilizer and labor. Cousin Floyd was right on in terms of some of the fruit that can be grown that way. I grow American persimmons and paw paws and they’re not even native to my climate. They are better home orchard fruit than commercial storage/sales fruit, though. I think over time people will become more acclimated to berries and other fruits that can be grown this way, even if only because they will be the cheapest organic fruits you can buy because you don’t have the labor cost of spraying, fertilizing, etc.
John S
PDX OR