(On rading this thru - it needs re-organising, but I have to rush out and do stuff. I hope you can get the main points.)
Yes, his approach is of course better than commercial growers'. What does his stuff taste like? I wouldn't buy it. My partner and i went down there to have a look and get a few vegies - but the smell of urea, the blue nitrogen puffed leaves and the roundup comment put us both off. I don't know if he tells the truth - he *seemed* to be genuine and honest, even in his comments like "The only thing wrong with organics is that you just can't get enough N."
As to consumers. There are kids in their twenties whose only experience of "fresh" food is the plastic wrapped chilled and watered commercially grown stuff in the supermarket. They can't smell, taste or even touch half of it before they buy it. They never in their lives picked an apple or dug up a carrot. They don't know what real food really tastes like, looks like or how it is grown. This is not just a mistake, but the result of what may as well have been conditoning/education program that has been going on for years.
Now, starting from that point, how can u expect such people to be able to judge good food, ask the right questions of the grower, figure out what is good practise in agriculture? Certification IS a paternalistic, cotton wool approach. But what practical alternative is there for the time being. We need something to get us out of this dead end.
We here (on this list) are all into food and growing and see it as important. Most people are raised to only consider price and presentation. Food is just titilation or "fuel". That is a problem of education and my hope is that certifiers are contributing to the re-education of the public.
If I am wrong about the education thing, then why are people still buying supermarket food?
Okay, I do agree about organic certification not conveying much - even BD certification here is no guarantee of quality. Go and try some supermarket food - it tastes a LOT better than much of the organically certified food I can buy at twice the price. It's true. 30 years ago we all said the opposite as we ate shrunken wormy (shop boughten) apples - but a lot has changed in recent years, I have found. I never said certification was perfect, just better than any alternatives I am aware of (except CSAs and similar small scale things).
Finally, growers who are anti certification fall into 3 groups, in my experience:
1). Those that don't need it, they have their regular customers who know them and trust them and they are doing fine
2). Those that think it costs too much/can't afford it/resent the certifiers taking money
3) Those who are excluded by the certifiers. Either because their management just isn't de rigeur. e.g. "Live without Roundup? Are u joking?" or their practises or skills don't meet the demands of the certifiers. (Who wants to join a club that wouldn't have you?)
The first one is fine, but isn't really an argument against certification. The second doesn't recognise the economic realities of running a bureaucracy, and the third is where a lot of the arguments on this list come from, as far as I can tell.
> There's a guy down the road from me who sells "organic" vegetables topeople. He makes his compost by mixing urea and sawdust together and leaving it for 3 weeks, then puts it on the plants. He told me he doesn't use any pesticides or chemicals - "only a bit of roundup at the start, of course".
Hello Graeme If this guy is only using a bit of roundup at the start he's a mile in front of his commercial chemical counterparts, and if he really manages to produce his vegetable crops without any in crop pesticides, he is doing a lot of things right! What does his stuff taste like? And most importantly does he tell the truth when he sells his produce? If he does then I'd suggest he's not much of a problem. Organic certification tells the consumer that there is less toxic chemical present in the food but it says nothing (or very little)about the nutritional quality, and until consumers wake up and start to buy on taste rather than appearance nothing much will change.
His clients are just as poorly informed - either they don't know or simply don't ask about his practices. What do you do about such situations? I don't know.Certification cant fix this - only quality testing by the end consumer - if your neighbor's produce looks good, tastes great, and is grown without chemicals in crop he is most of the way home and his consumers will figure it out, If it is rubbish and tastes like cardboard and he tells lies then they will probably figure that out too. Cheers Lloyd Charles
-- Graeme Gerrard 1480 Sapphire Coast Drive Wallagoot 2550
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