Continued from Part II.
An organic bulletin claims that the price of organic food is more reflective of the actual cost of growing it, and that tax subsidies have helped conventional farmers from going bankrupt. Are conventional farmers going bankrupt because they’re selling so cheaply? Or is it because they are growing one crop of expensive, patented seeds, using pesticides, herbicides and fungicides harvested with expensive machinery and sold to large food corporations who want to sell fast food as cheap as possible? Del Monte is willing to pay a LOT less than Joe Shmoe at the fruit stand. It’s my opinion that it’s not the farming method that is bankrupting farmers but their choice of product and customers.
I know a farmer in Roseburg who sells cherries, peaches and apples. He has several acres of prime property and a beautiful house. In his garage is a map with pins stuck all over of places to which he and his wife have traveled. He hires employees to help pick his crops. He sits back behind a few tables of produce next to his freezer and rings up sales all day while gabbing with his customers. I’ve sometimes sat with him for two hours. This couple makes a good living selling conventional fruit at less than half the price of organic. And they don’t look overworked or broke by any stretch.
The prices of produce have gone up along with everything else because of fuel costs. Trucking produce from California increases the retail price, but the local organic farmers are keeping stride. Their increase in fuel costs is nowhere near that faced by distant farmers. Why does a strawberry picked here cost as much as a strawberry picked in California?
How is it possible that a conventional strawberry farmer half an hour away can make a living selling his U-pick strawberries for 50 cents a pound, but a nearby farmer who isn’t even certified organic (just certified naturally grown) wants $2.50 a pound for U-pick and $3.50 for a small basket at the market?
The last time I was at the market I didn’t buy any strawberries because they were all starting to mold, an indication of poor soil. If I’m not paying top dollar for quality produce grown in healthy, mineral-rich, fertile soil, then what am I paying for? $3.50 for moldy strawberries. Yum!
Farmers' market
What do you think the farmer got for his cucumbers that were going to be turned into pickles? Maybe a nickel each? A dime each? How much could he have gotten if he diversified his crops and sold locally to feed his neighbors, like farmers used to do before big business entered the picture? How can that farmer survive on a nickel a cucumber plus a subsidy? How can an organic farmer say he needs $2.50 per cucumber to “survive”? You’ll hear that word bandied about if you start questioning prices, the implication being that you are suggesting the farmer starve.
Continue to Part IV.
