> Dear James, et. al., > . Both are studying > their asses off learning all they can as fast as they can. It won't be that > much longer and they won't need me any more. It gives me a good feeling. > > I'll admit I'm not comfortable with the idea of going head to head in the > marketplace with the chemical ag boys. They've got hundreds of billions if > not trillions of dollars worth of muscle to lean on us with, and we are > still in the pusilanimous thousands and tens of thousands. So I think we'd > better keep our heads down a bit longer and not get them to take us > seriously. > Dear Hugh - James I have a friend who was a farmer until two years ago when he sold out to go a new direction selling foliar fertiliser. He and I and a couple of other guys started out several years ago using this hotmix trace element foliar and seed treatment brew - I was the first in this area and encouraged the others based on results I'd seen. It was a good first step away from conventional thinking and the company behind it is using Albrecht logic in their approach to fertilising and they are getting good results. Recently these guys have moved into viticulture and have managed to snare a couple of the big names in our area simply by getting better quality grapes - and boy has that annoyed the conventional agronomy people - my mate has had these company guys following him - waiting a couple of hours after he leaves the client farm then going in to badmouth all the information he gave the farmer. One company has devised a contract that they have fooled some farmers into signing - a combination of cheap finance for purchases and low fees for crop monitoring with a sneaky little clause that says that the farmer agrees not to use anything not recommended and sold by that company - my mate has hardly started but he's made the opposition mad as hell already - you can bet they will have a lot of dirty tricks left yet - up to and including direct sabotage of some of his clients crops if thats what it takes. He could not possibly have done them serious damage yet but they see a clear threat and are acting accordingly, this is only LOCAL sales companies yet - not the big boys!
I think Hugh is entirely correct to say keep our heads down and not make them take us seriously - there are a lot of receptive people out there - anybody doing cell grazing is a prospect - farmers are turning up in droves to eco farmer seminars, phil wheeler , arden andersen, gary zimmer, we could probably do a repeat of Hugh's tour next year and get the same sort of attendance as recently - they're out there, some of em are ready and some not. Cheers all, Lloyd Charles
