Organic Growers Speak To Congress

Small organic farm operations are seeking to gain a bigger piece of the $25 Billion dollars in subsidies that were given to conventional growers last year.  This figure doesn't even include the billions more that were given to the same companies to help aid in marketing and research.

It's no secret that over the decades, subsidies have viewed by many as the reason for contributing to the industrialization of U.S. agriculture, concentrated on vast monoculture crops (corn, wheat, cotton etc..) on ever larger and fewer farms, driving up land prices and depopulating rural communities.

What the organic farmers are asking for is mostly an added share of the research and education money.  Organic farming happens to be an intricate and complex undertaking that relies on crop rotations and other ecological management tactics of insects, weeds and diseases rather than pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Even if the nation’s rapidly aging farmers were not reluctant to adopt such methods, experts said at Wednesday’s hearing that federal farm programs make it even more difficult to take the leap.

With a huge boost in farming subsidies to the organic farmers that need it most this could help aleviate some of the deepest problems relating to our health and environment. Petrochemically based farming is going to face dimminishing returns as the price of fertilizer and pesticides (even their availability) begins to climb out of reach due to high oil and gas prices. This summer will be a real problem for farmers as they try to calculate the fuel, fertilizer and pesticide costs for the next growing season. It hasn’t been good for them this past year and it will be worse this year.

You can read a more in depth article on this topic at the San Fransisco Chronicle.

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