Organic farming gaining respect in Congress

[hoodat]

Finally the voice of American consumers and organic farmers is gaining the attention of Congress. The organic market share is 4% and growing rapidly. Money talks and Congress is finally listening although some farm state Congressmen are doing so reluctantly. Even some of the huge food companies are paying attention. Heinz just introduced its first ever organic ketchup.

WASHINGTON (AP) The organic food industry is gaining clout on Capitol Hill, prompted by rising consumer demand and its entry into traditional farm states. But that isn't going over well with everyone in Congress.

Tensions between conventional and organic agriculture boiled over this week during a late-night House Agriculture Committee debate on a sweeping farm bill that has for decades propped up traditional crops and largely ignored organics.

http://news.yahoo.com/organic-indus...Rwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3BtaA--;_ylv=3

 

[hoodat]

The key words there are "rising consumer demand". If the consumer will buy it, they will produce it and if the consumer won't they'll stop making it. A big thank you to those who take the time to search out organic and non GMO products. It isn't that easy to go over an entire shelf full of items reading every label. Many of the labels are tricky to give the impresion they are healthy when they are not. Such terms as,"heart healthy", and "all natural" mean nothing since there is no standard they have to meet to make those claims. They may claim to be heart healthy because they contain a little oat bran when otherwise they are full of fats, starch and high fructose corn syrup. There is no law to stop them. Likewise everything that exists is, by definition, natural but that doesn't mean it's healthy.

 

[baymule]

Thanks for posting this Hoodat! It is about time that those pointy-headed politicians started paying attention to organics. I bet a lot of them really do pay attention, but privately and for their own dinner plates!

 

[897tgigvib]

Yea, "Beef, it's what's for dinner" is a beef industrywide support ad. Sam Elliot's voice I think.

Why not have some Olympic athlete's voice saying something like, "Organically grown food, it's for everyone's health and the whole planet's health".

 

[seedcorn]

Because of law suits saying prove it. Then the investigation on all the organic food sold that isn't... Opens can of worms organic couldn't stand.

 

[897tgigvib]

Let's open this can of worms. Wide open. Spotlight it!

Have some guts I say to the population and the legislators. When they say do this or your prices will raise, let the prices raise! If they say it'll open a can of worms, let's take those worms.

Whenever someone or some group tells me, us or you that doing a good thing will have consequences, oh, my first instinct, bring on the consequences. Add to them all you can.

If I did not stand up to my junior high school bully telling me the same kinds of things, I'd probably be a handsome feller right now. Nope, I'm glad I have my face and wear it proudly.

It is more important to do good and suffer than let the powers that be do wrong and be foolish.

Thank you SeedCorn for being such a faithful reminder of who I am and how I came to be this way. Yea. I'm not extinct yet. Maybe after I go extinct there will be nobody to remind the world to stand up to threats of price increases or to confusing cans of worms. Nah, there are others. I'm sure of it. Somewhere.

 

[seedcorn]

Hoodat, guts?????? Talk to me about the millions that go hungry because of lack of food. Talk to me about the billions who would starve if we went back to 50 bu/acre corn. The law of supply and demand will not cease because u think it should. At 82, you get SS (40X more than you paid in, FREE medical, etc). Try supporting a family, put responsibility of young children on your shoulders! So u took a punch...big deal, all of us did that are over 50--it is just how it was. It's easy to be a theorist when everyone else pays your way in life.

I have NO problem with organic, none! Wish the supporters of it, would clean up their own house first. Then take on American Ag. Organic feeds 10x more grain than they grow-how do you suppose they do that? Ever ask? Ever attach any articles that do ask?

IF you want to label food, better be able to follow the WHOLE pipeline.

Hoodat, now go open that can of worms--if you dare.

 

[so lucky]

Seedcorn, I think you are barking up the wrong tree today.

 

[hoodat]

Hoodat, guts?????? Talk to me about the millions that go hungry because of lack of food. Talk to me about the billions who would starve if we went back to 50 bu/acre corn. The law of supply and demand will not cease because u think it should. At 82, you get SS (40X more than you paid in, FREE medical, etc). Try supporting a family, put responsibility of young children on your shoulders! So u took a punch...big deal, all of us did that are over 50--it is just how it was. It's easy to be a theorist when everyone else pays your way in life.

I have NO problem with organic, none! Wish the supporters of it, would clean up their own house first. Then take on American Ag. Organic feeds 10x more grain than they grow-how do you suppose they do that? Ever ask? Ever attach any articles that do ask?

IF you want to label food, better be able to follow the WHOLE pipeline.

Hoodat, now go open that can of worms--if you dare.

People are starving but it is more due to the lack of proper food distribution than the lack of food itself. Money rules and if the poor cannot afford to pay for it the food will not be distributed to them. A great deal of good food is destroyed every year because the poor cannot pay for it and giving it to them will lower the market price.
I don't know where you get this 50 bushels of corn to the acre figure (I suspect it came from the dust bowl years) but an Iowa State University study finds that organic lags only slightly behind conventional in yield of corn. In soybeans organic actually came out ahead of conventional. This is probably because soybeans depend more on soil organisms than corn does. Organic soil typically swarms with soil micro-organisms where in conventional soil they are almost absent. When you factor in all of the chemicals the organic farmer doesn't need to buy organic food is actually more profitable, especially since it commands a premium price over conventional.
Much of the corn grown is a special variety meant to attract government subsidies as fuel and is only marginally suitable as livestock food and barely edible by humans so that corn is not part of the world food supply.
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/farms/02reports/ne/OrganicConvSystems.pdf

 

[897tgigvib]

"American Ag"

That term gets bandied about, so I googled it, just because the way it's getting used made me wonder if the folks who grow heirloom Apples for the Coop organic store are included in that term, or maybe if they would not want to be included.

At the top of the google search for that term is an implement company that sells used farm equipment and tractors. On down the list are other companies, a hydroponic store in Portland, heck, even some insurance company.

In the middle of the google page I see a webpage listed as American Ag Network, so I just now clicked it.

It's a radio network. http://americanagnetwork.com/

They seem to have articles about weather for farmers and a lot of political farm bill news. I don't know, but is this the American Ag you refer to?

=====

Or, are you using the phrase with your own implied meaning? Ya got to admit, what you mean by the phrase is open to interpretation. It could well mean that you view a separation between large farming and small or micro farming as a political separation, a separation not only of size but of kind, that small or micro farms do not deserve the title of American Agriculturists, but large or huge conglomerate farms do deserve such a title.

Now, I do note SeedCorn, that you are using some effort at holding to such a view. This is not a baseless noting. When a well respected and wise man of a very well wisened age, considered as such by a large majority, a vast majority actually, speaks, types his words, most of us pay good heed. When and if he says something not quite correct, great care is made to inform him with much respect. SeedCorn, rather than hear my words of explaining that threats of greater prices, you turn my words upside down, and with ever greater vigor, use such threats, adding mass starvation to them, against Hoodat.

Using such technique is typical of dogmatism in the face of an opinion different than yours. I'm saying, it appears you are using great effort to hold to a view that even legislators are beginning to see must be moderated, legislators who face public opinion.

I'm now looking more on google's pages to see if you meant something else by American Ag. You see, that phrase is the power punch you used. It is only right for those you would use it on to be able to see it coming, else it is a sucker punch, and I don't think you'd do that. Not intentionally. I speak figuratively of course when I say sucker punch, a punch of words, a verbal punch. (You got my IQ going full force, just to let you know.)

I see another company called that, one which specializes in pesticides and biotech. http://www.amagsrv.com/

Or perhaps you mean American Ag as US news and World Reports mean, such as articles about the merits of microbreweries?

It begins to look as though you mean the term as you'd like to define it. So, I'm wondering if you, as a seemingly shrinking minority, would use American Ag as a term that only applies to large to huge farms and conglomerations of farm structures, and omit the small and micro farmers. If that's the case, then you feel that farms that are large can be subsidized while small farms can't be subsidized? That's the question that is to the point of this topic. Or, maybe you feel that small farmers should not have coalition groups, such as the coalition that advertises beef?