Consumer prices for organic food

[homewardbound]

[There are no, "these websites".
Do you mean the website, as in the one you posted?

http://www.coonamessettfarm.com/id16.html

Their wool is short stapled and fine. It grades at about 55-60, and spinners enjoy working with the wool. Fleece test at 19- 20 microns, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

http://www.roundaboutsheepranch.com/wool_information.html

The wool of Babydoll Southdown sheep is short stapled with a 19-29 micron
count. The wool is fine and dense with a medium crimp. The grade is
55-60. This puts this wool into the class of cashmere.

http://www.canvasranch.com/babydoll_sheep.php

Their wool is short stapled and fine with a 19-22 micron count, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

http://babydollsouthdowns.com/babydoll_sheep_history.html

Back when the Babydoll Sheep registry started ten samples of Babydoll Sheep fleece were tested and found to have a micron count between 19 - 22 microns. This puts the Babydoll Sheep fleece in the same class of Cashmere.

http://www.followyourdreamfarm.net/content/629

Their wool is short stapled and fine with a 19-22 micron count, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

Satisfied?

 

[homewardbound]

I hope to sell some veggies and plant starts at the farmer's market next year. While I do grow things organically I have no intention of getting certified organic, mostly because I can't afford to. I'm hoping that just explaining to my (purely hypothetical, at this point) customers HOW we grow our produce will be good enough.
*Edited because I can't spell this morning.

This is all any farmer should ever have to do. But when you let big corporations get involved thing go differently because you cannot trust Wall Street. Someone I found on another board once asked for advice on how to set up a CSA and one of their biggest concerns was how to go about advertising and attracting customers. I live in a metropolitan area of over a million people and we have maybe 2 farmers markets the local thousand square mile area where local farmers can sell their produce. But these markets are only open on certain days and certain times of the year and most of these markets are more arts and craft markets than farmers markets because for all practical purpose we have no farmers in the area. Everything, even what the few organic grocery stores sell, has to be shipped in. And if you want good quality fresh produce you wont get it here at Walmart or any of the non-organic grocery stores. But when I told this potential farmer that (based on my experience as a non-farming consumer who wants good quality prodeuce) customers will find them so they wont likely need to do much marketing. But then all of the people on the board who supposedly are farmers jumped down my throat for suggesting that their way of farming isnt as hard as they want to say it is. Its the same situation with existing organic farmers who insist that it costs them more to be organic than it costs a conventional farmer to be non-organic. But I fear that these people are just afraid that the public will catch on about their racket and their absurd profit margins will go by the wayside.

 

[chris09]

[There are no, "these websites".
Do you mean the website, as in the one you posted?

http://www.coonamessettfarm.com/id16.html

Their wool is short stapled and fine. It grades at about 55-60, and spinners enjoy working with the wool. Fleece test at 19- 20 microns, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

http://www.roundaboutsheepranch.com/wool_information.html

The wool of Babydoll Southdown sheep is short stapled with a 19-29 micron
count. The wool is fine and dense with a medium crimp. The grade is
55-60. This puts this wool into the class of cashmere.

http://www.canvasranch.com/babydoll_sheep.php

Their wool is short stapled and fine with a 19-22 micron count, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

http://babydollsouthdowns.com/babydoll_sheep_history.html

Back when the Babydoll Sheep registry started ten samples of Babydoll Sheep fleece were tested and found to have a micron count between 19 - 22 microns. This puts the Babydoll Sheep fleece in the same class of Cashmere.

http://www.followyourdreamfarm.net/content/629

Their wool is short stapled and fine with a 19-22 micron count, which puts it in the class of cashmere.

Satisfied?

I thought you were done arguing. How many sites would you like me to post now?
Am I satisfied? Just bring up a hole new question, why these so called breeder are not breeding to there breed standard?
The truth is in the standard not what any Tom Dick or Harry puts on the web page. You can believe what you want.

Chris

 

[seedcorn]

I hope to sell some veggies and plant starts at the farmer's market next year. While I do grow things organically I have no intention of getting certified organic, mostly because I can't afford to. I'm hoping that just explaining to my (purely hypothetical, at this point) customers HOW we grow our produce will be good enough.
*Edited because I can't spell this morning.

This is all any farmer should ever have to do. But when you let big corporations get involved thing go differently because you cannot trust Wall Street. Someone I found on another board once asked for advice on how to set up a CSA and one of their biggest concerns was how to go about advertising and attracting customers. I live in a metropolitan area of over a million people and we have maybe 2 farmers markets the local thousand square mile area where local farmers can sell their produce. But these markets are only open on certain days and certain times of the year and most of these markets are more arts and craft markets than farmers markets because for all practical purpose we have no farmers in the area. Everything, even what the few organic grocery stores sell, has to be shipped in. And if you want good quality fresh produce you wont get it here at Walmart or any of the non-organic grocery stores. But when I told this potential farmer that (based on my experience as a non-farming consumer who wants good quality prodeuce) customers will find them so they wont likely need to do much marketing. But then all of the people on the board who supposedly are farmers jumped down my throat for suggesting that their way of farming isnt as hard as they want to say it is. Its the same situation with existing organic farmers who insist that it costs them more to be organic than it costs a conventional farmer to be non-organic. But I fear that these people are just afraid that the public will catch on about their racket and their absurd profit margins will go by the wayside.

It's of now value to get into a debate here but I would suggest you go on a farm tour, actually talk to a farmer. Don't lecture him, look at the costs he faces, margins he can expect and the amount of money he has to generate. "Special" markets are highly unstable. If you truly followed the meat side of the organic market, you would find there is very little true organic food.

Prime example is a "organic" group of farmers near south Bend, IN. They want to use non-GMO corn but they won't pay for the increased costs. What costs you ask? Well the seed is cheaper but chemicals more expensive, more insect damage with overall net of less product and money. If you don't control the weeds, you will lose almost 60% of your yield. You can't compete with 80 bu corn when your neighbors are harvesting 190+. Yes, he uses manure but it costs the same per acre as commercial fertilizer. If you don't control the weeds, no crop. No crop, no corn to feed the chickens/hogs. We won't even get into protein products to feed chicken/hogs.

Most people have a hard time keeping a 30' by 30' garden clean of weeds, now imagine trying to do 30 acres.

 

[homewardbound]

It's of now value to get into a debate here but I would suggest you go on a farm tour, actually talk to a farmer. Don't lecture him, look at the costs he faces, margins he can expect and the amount of money he has to generate. "Special" markets are highly unstable. If you truly followed the meat side of the organic market, you would find there is very little true organic food.

Prime example is a "organic" group of farmers near south Bend, IN. They want to use non-GMO corn but they won't pay for the increased costs. What costs you ask? Well the seed is cheaper but chemicals more expensive, more insect damage with overall net of less product and money. If you don't control the weeds, you will lose almost 60% of your yield. You can't compete with 80 bu corn when your neighbors are harvesting 190+. Yes, he uses manure but it costs the same per acre as commercial fertilizer. If you don't control the weeds, no crop. No crop, no corn to feed the chickens/hogs. We won't even get into protein products to feed chicken/hogs.

Most people have a hard time keeping a 30' by 30' garden clean of weeds, now imagine trying to do 30 acres.

My mothers mother grew up on her familys dairy/poultry farm in North Carolina. Her ancestors have been farming in America (Pennsylvania and then North Carolina) for almost 300 years. Her ancestors came mostly from the Rhineland and the people there are natural born farmers- just read up on the Thirty Years War. My fathers parents were farmers when he was born and they were both expert vegetable growers. My earliest memories are of me climbing over cucumber beds. I planted my first garden solely by myself in 1981 when I was just 13 years old. I started researching organic farming and ecologically sustainable technology during my first year in college while getting a biology degree. So I am by no means the neophyte you seem to think I am.

Organic and non-organic farmers have the same objective- to produce food and sell it at a profit. Other than paying for the privilege of putting the word organic on the label and hiking their prices accordingly, I have yet to see anyone with legitimate documentation showing that organic methods cost any more than non-organic methods do. Organic growers would not have special markets if they hadnt gone out of their way to create them by suckering people into paying higher prices for what the organic farmers wish to sell.

Why does non-GMO corn cost more than GMO corn does? Have all of the seed companies that sold non-GMO corn gone under so no non-GMO seed is available? And once he has non-GMO corn seed why can the farmer not use the same methods (to plow the field, plant the seed, maintain soil structure and fertility and irrigate the crop, protect it from insects and disease and then harvest it) that farmers have been using for decades and centuries to grow non-GMO corn? The most you might be able to say is that GMO corn produces more per plant than non-GMO corn does so GMO farmers can flood the market and drive down the price you can get for non-GMO corn- but this has nothing to do with the production costs of a non-GMO crop.

And what documentation do you have to support your claim, Yes, he uses manure but it costs the same per acre as commercial fertilizer.? You make it sound like an organic farmer cannot use crop rotation or plant green manures or raise his own livestock to provide manure for his fields.

And your claim Most people have a hard time keeping a 30' by 30' garden clean of weeds, is bogus. My biggest garden ever was about 40 by 40. I had 14 planting beds each measuring about 3 by 8. I put some plastic sandbags (empty) and some black plastic film in the pathways. I filled in the beds with a good quality commercial compost. It didnt take much effort to pull up the few weeds that sprouted in the beds- after a point the vegetable plants shaded the ground around them to the point that few weeds would grow. When a crop in a bed was finished I simply turned the soil over with a shovel a time or two and the planted something else.

 

[897tgigvib]

Done right, there are very few weeds.

""Most people have a hard time keeping a 30' by 30' garden clean of weeds""

I have a VERY easy time with weeds with my 1500 square feet! Almost no weeds.

Why? I built my garden, brought in the forest compost. As I built it with this fluff soil, this fluff was moved and worked. A person can stick their hand in my soil and easily push it to the bottom, 12 to 30 inches down. As I worked each spot to plant, any weed sprouts got pinched out. As my seeds sprout any weeds get pinched as I water lightly.

I plant intensly. I do put plants much closer than chemical users. My plants then outgrow any straggly weeds under them which get easily yanked. New weed seeds generally do not blow in. I'm protected from the animals of the forest.

Some of my weeds are Fir or Oak tree sprouts!



And Homeward. I would suggest that on that other board to be more careful about telling a farmer his or her work is not as hard as he or she says it is. Maybe you are young, but, in general, sage counsel says, be careful about telling a person they do not work hard, and even more careful about saying a profession is not difficult or hard work. So, yes. Your throat was rightly jumped down on. Bear it and learn.

Back to imagining about keeping 30 or 300 acres free of weeds.

What intercrops well with corn Seedcorn?

If Peas could be planted a month earlier, quite heavily, they could crop when the Corn is a month on. I may well be planting Corn in sections of my young Pea patch in a couple weeks. I am not trying to argue here, but to lay forth one possible alternative ansCorwer to the problem of weeds in Corn. Anything practically besides the cruder alternative of chemicals or maybe worse yet, Unlabeled GMO Corn products laid onto the diets of the unsuspecting consumer masses. By the way, you are one. So am I.

I don't enjoy the idea of eating my favorite candy bar only to find out it is made using high fructose corn syrup made from GMO corn that was designed to tolerate high doses of weed killer. That means high doses of weed killer was used on it, which means my body ingested a lot of CHN molecules in all sorts of forms. My ancestors did not evolve to be able to tolerate that. Did yours somehow miraculously evolve to tolerate that? (Well heck, since humans are determined to make a trillion humans on this planet at once, and we have to feed them all, maybe we should GMO humans? While we are at it, to fit us all on this planet, and make us need less resources each, maybe we should GMO up humans that only weigh 25 pounds full grown?

Sorry. I actually drank a small bottle of beer today. I'm not a drinker. Too light weight. I wonder if it was made with GMO Barley?

 

[homewardbound]

And Homeward. I would suggest that on that other board to be more careful about telling a farmer his or her work is not as hard as he or she says it is.

I am going to tell them what I tell them based on my personal experience. If you have to spend more time and labor than I do in order to grow as much as I do in the same amount of space that I have to use, then you are doing something wrong.

Maybe you are young,

I am 44 and I have had my own garden since I was 13.

but, in general, sage counsel says, be careful about telling a person they do not work hard, and even more careful about saying a profession is not difficult or hard work. So, yes. Your throat was rightly jumped down on. Bear it and learn.

What a patronizing jackass you are.

 

[The Mama Chicken]

We don't behave that way on this forum. Name calling and abusive language are absolutely unacceptable. You can disagree with someone without resorting to that. I'm done with this thread now.

 

[homewardbound]

We don't behave that way on this forum. Name calling and abusive language are absolutely unacceptable. You can disagree with someone without resorting to that. I'm done with this thread now.

I wasn't name calling I was stating a fact. This person is behaving towards me in the same manner in which he claims I have behaved towards others when I question peoples claims about how hard they have it as organic farmers. Organic farmers have a vested interest in claiming that they have to expend more time, labor and money to produce a crop than conventional farmers do because this is the only way organic farmers can justify the outrageous prices they charge consumers. I dont trust organic farmers any farther than I could throw them because my personal experience tells me that organic methods are no more time consuming, labor intensive or expensive than conventional methods are.

 

[seedcorn]

What intercrops well with corn Seedcorn?

Different areas have different growing time. In midwest, corn uses all the growing time we have. We've tried interplanting soybeans but the soybean yields are reduced due to competition from the corn.

As far as documentation that manure costs as much as commercial fertilizer, that's how it is priced. They do an analysis of it and price it accordingly.

As far as non-GMO new inbreds being produced there is only 1 major seed breeder left to do that. Why? $$$$ as that is what the farmers want.

It's not that organic input costs are higher, it's just that yields are much less because of weeds and insects.

Homewardbound, I challenge you to keep 30 acres of row crops clean by hand labor. Worst part is that you will starve off of the net profits on 30 acres. You had better have an excellent income off of the farm. You have to have higher prices to offset the advantages conventional farmers have. I am not an advocate of organic produce at all, just realize their need for larger revenues.