Organic Cotton--Benefits Other Than Yield?

 Here's an assessment of the impact of growing organic cotton in India. It seems the  result is not higher yields (no surprise) but the benefits which are less tangible. I note the support from a number of NGO's and the psychic rewards of being involved in something of a crusade, or at least a good cause, rather than just grubbing for the added dollar.  

A cynic would believe that those who chase the monetary rewards will, in the long run, win out. 

 

Illogic in Organic Farming?

Modern Farming runs a piece on organic farming.  I find it illogical: 

One issue is price. On average, organic food costs 20 percent more than conventionally produced food. Even hardcore organic shoppers like me sometimes bypass it due to cost.

That's one paragraph.  The author goes on to talk about the need for more and more organic farmers, and a larger acreage, ending in a push to dedicate a percentage of USDA farm programs to organic farms.

I think this is ignoring market signals.  The market is saying that organic food is more costly.  Is organic making inroads despite its higher cost?  Certainly it's increased since the 1990 farm bill which directed USDA to establish standards for "organic".  But that's 30 years ago.  I don't think the market is saying the advantages and virtues of organic are sufficient to drive a massive surge in organic production.  (IMO what will drive expansion is a continuing rise in American living standards and incomes--"organic" is a status symbol, a signifier of virtue, a feeder into one's ego and self-image.) 

Conceivably added subsidies for organic farming could boost the share of the market, but I think they would be expensive.

Packaged Produce

 My local Safeway is selling more and more produce in packages.  Corn is no longer on the cob, so you don't have the job of husking it.  Salad is shredded and mixed, just open the package into the bowl and put dressing on it.  

What the Safeway buyer wants is convenience, saving time by having someone back in the chain do the work. It's all part of work shifting by the upper middle class--we have money but, unless retired, not the time so we pay others to do stuff.

This trend, which has been going on for decades (think TV dinners in the 1950's), poses a big problem for the advocates of organic farming, CSA's, and similar ideas. You can't ask the farmer to do the packaging, but your market share will be limited if you don't.

The Limits of Small Farms

Civil Eats has this piece on Jesse Frost, who operates a .75 acre no-till farm in Kentucky.

It all sounds good, except when he says his operation grosses $70K, and apparently uses 2+ person-years of labor--i.e., one paid employee and Jesse full time, and some contribution from his wife. 

I can accept that his out-of-pocket expenses, assuming he owns the land outright with no mortgage,  are low.  But $70K divided by 2 is $35K each, which isn't much over the minimum wage progressives would like to see.  I can also accept that food costs for his wife and him would be relatively low, especially if they freeze and/or can a lot. But I'm not convinced that the cash returns are sufficient for a lifetime supporting a family through all the ups and downs.  It may well be enough with the wife's outside income, likely providing health insurance and covering SS. 

Court Decision on Organic/Hydroponics

 Judge has ruled USDA can include hydroponics in the "organic" category.

Followers of Rodale, like my late mother, will not be happy.

Organic Farming Has a Weakness

 Give credit to Grist for publishing this piece on regenerative grazing (a version of organic farming which reduces carbon emissions from beef cattle by capturing carbon in the soil).

A new analysis says there is indeed a big reduction in emissions, but the problem is the regenerative system requires more land, 2.5 times more land.

I may have blogged on this before--I think this applies to row crops as well.  Doing a rotation among row crops, small grains, and legumes requires more land for the legumes, as well as a market for the hay.

Organic Fraud

Grain being sold as organic wasn't. Big fraud case in Missouri

Combining Organizations

I tend to think of the outcome of two organizations combining as based on physics, sort of like two objects in space.  An asteroid colliding with the earth doesn't affect the earth's path through space much at all.  Why shouldn't the same be true of two companies, like Perdue and Niman Ranch, which combined a few years ago.

Turns out humans aren't solid brainless objects, at least not always.  John Johnson has an interesting piece on the results of the combination of a big poultry producer and a smaller organic venture.

The Extremes of Farming: Enlightenment Versus Romance

Having just blogged about Netherlands agriculture and precision farming, I was struck this morning as I was skimming Twitter by a proposal to combine small farms with a small town (sorry but I didn't note the tweet and can't find it now).  It seems to be that we can see the long time contest between the Enlightenment and the Romantic eras being reenacted today in farming.

On the one hand you have the increasing consolidation of farming in the US and elsewhere, consolidation being driven by investments in technology which increase the amount of commodities per acre and per hour of labor, with decreasing inputs per unit.  It's the application of intelligence and human control to farming.  On the other hand you have the less tangible byproducts and the emotions elicited by the process of organic and/or small farming.

I guess with that summary there's no hiding which side I basically favor.

Vertical/Indoor Farms

Here's a Fortune article on an outfit in NJ.

Here's a Technology Review piece on farming in shipping containers.

It's possible that the advent of LED lights makes such farming economically feasible, feasible at least if the produce gets a premium from being "local" and "organic".  USDA has agreed that they may be labeled "organic", though the original organic community does not like the idea at all. 

Call me old, I am, but I don't call these "farms" or "farming".

Unrest Within the Organic Community

The Post did an investigation of a big "organic" dairy a while back.  I put in the quotes because the article raised questions about whether it met the requirements for being organic, especially whether the cows were grazing or not. Here's a piece questioning whether USDA's subsequent investigation which found no big problems were sufficiently thorough (apparently the dairy was warned before the investigators showed up).

This would be a good episode for some academic to write on, because it involves several issues: efficiency from scaling up, the tradeoffs of grazing versus grain (and the simple logistics of grazing), the bureaucracy of writing and enforcing regulations, capture of bureaucracy by interest groups, strategies of interest groups of various kinds (the "organics" wage a media war, the industry wage a guerilla war of lobbyists).

Defining "Organic": "Good" Versus "Not Bad"

A report here on the controversy over whether hydroponic, etc. ag is really "organic".

As I see it, it's a debate between the old-line organic affiliated with the food movement, who often (yes mom, thinking of you) romanticized family farming and producerism, versus the high-capital people who can fund hydroponic agriculture.  Or, to put it another way: a contest between the "good" of naturally grown food and the "not bad" of unnaturally grown food which excludes all the bad 'cides.

Or, a third way: between the romantics and the rationalists.

Bad News for Organic Farmers

Now that Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods has been approved, Bezos' first step was to cut the prices of some organic produce, probably signalling an emphasis on lower prices in the future.  IMHO that's bad news for organic farmers, who will face pressure to take lower prices, also meaning they will face their own pressure to enlarge their operations and/or cut corners in order to survive.  So the long summer  of years when organic farmers could ask for and get a sizable premium for purity is drawing to a close, and they face a turbulent fall and then: "Winter is Coming".

USDA Screws Up Organic Food?

That's the thrust of a Washington Post piece  on a hearing by Senate Ag:

“It seems that uncertainty and dysfunction have overtaken the National Organic Standards Board and the regulations associated with the National Organic Program,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee, said in his opening remarks. “These problems create an unreliable regulatory environment and prevent farmers that choose organic from utilizing advancements in technology and operating their business in an efficient and effective manner. Simply put, this hurts our producers and economies in rural America.”

Amish Organic Farmers and Steel-Wheeled Tractors

Washington Post has a good article on a group of Amish dairies in Iowa who are producing organic milk, but who are being undercut by what they view as illegitimate "organic milk" from large dairies.  This is a sequel to an earlier article where the Post challenged some large dairies, trying to prove by analysis of the milk and data on the operations that the cows could not be grazing as much as is required by USDA regs in order to be labeled "organic".

That's a valid challenge.  And the Amish seem eminently qualified to produce organic milk, given their religion-based resistance to technology.  It fits their "small" farms (under 100 cows, which still seems large to me).

I've followed the Amish story for a long while, ever since I served on a task force in the 1970's with the county executive director of the Lancaster County ASCS Office, who would describe the ins and outs of their relations with government programs.  Donald Kraybill has been a major source of my knowledge of the Amish, and the lines they draw of acceptable and unacceptable technology.  I still remember pictures of a horse-drawn baler.

This article was accompanied by a picture of a steel-wheeled tractor being used on an Amish farm, which would seem to show this group of Amish pushing out the boundaries of acceptable technology.  What's ironic to me is that horses fit nicely into organic agriculture--they can eat the oats which form part of an acceptable crop rotation.  The switch from horses to tractors in the Midwest from 1930 to 1955 also meant a loss of the market for oats.  So while the Amish have a valid complaint against large dairies on the one hand, on the other they're slowly acceding to the forces which undermined our organic agriculture of the 1930's.

Organic Dairy

Extension has a long and detailed study of an organic dairy operation, favorable in most respects, but this jumped out at me:

"Compared to when he was farming conventionally, Joe finds that organic farming requires 50% more labor and twice as much management. Describing his farm as organic by design, Joe continuously evaluates and adjusts his farming practices, striving to design a system where everything works together."

Does conventional production agriculture substitute capital (i.e., machinery and inputs) for management?

Why Small Dairies Vanish, or Turn Organic

From Modern Farmer, talking about a USDA survey of dairy farms:

The data will also be used to study the economy of scale in the dairy industry. Kings says that based on data from the 2010 ARMS, dairies with less than 50 cows had production costs twice that of dairies with 1,000 cows or more. “This cost-size relationship means that large dairies account for an increasing share of milk production and small dairies are going out of business, often as small producers reach retirement,” she says.

Complications of Organic Farming

Extension has a piece where they analyzed the phosphorus and potassium added to an organic farm (since 1985) and the adverse effects of excess P and K.

Perhaps I'm too skeptical of the food movement but I suspect some of the adherents believe that "natural" equates to "easy".  After all, if you don't have to hassle with herbicides and pesticides and just rely on Mother Nature how difficult could farming be?  But as shown in the piece, if you want to maximize what you produce you're faced with the problem of analyzing and adjusting your inputs.

The Romantic Virtues of Dirt

The NYTimes had an article on the definition of "organic": specifically can vegetables grown through hydroponics be considered "organic"?  There's different views, particularly the big hydroponic growers who can get premium prices for their hothouse produce as compared to the dirt based organics.

Back in the day there would have been no question:  the organic movement had IMHO a romantic view of the virtues of dirt: there was a magic in the dirt, perhaps embodied in the bacteria and organisms present in natural soil, soil which had not been denaturalized by the repeated applications of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.  (Though back in the 1950's it was mostly fertilizers, not so much herbicides and pesticides.)  The organic people had a faith in nature, usually "Nature", that exceeded their faith in man.  It's partly the old top-down, bottom-up dichotomy.  If you believe in human reason you think people can figure out anything and then improve on what's developed from the past.  If you have a less strong belief, either in the strength of reason or in current development of understanding of natural phenomena, or if you want to avoid the work of understanding, you trust in nature.

I see a similar dichotomy in the controversies over GMO's or the precautionary principle.  I'd generally expect the Trump USDA to go with the hydroponics people, but maybe I'm just using the stereotype of Republicans favoring business people.

Dairy: Supply Management Versus Organic

NYTimes has a story on Canadian dairy farmers and their relationship to the EU (remember the Canada/EU treaty which was delayed for a bit by Walloon dairy farmers (i.e., Belgium).  Their concern is that more cheese may be imported from the EU into Canada. Two paragraphs:

The way the country’s “supply management” system works now, Canadian dairy farms are almost guaranteed to prosper. Milk production is controlled by quotas, marketing boards keep prices high and stable, and import duties of up to 300 percent largely shut out competition from abroad.

But after the deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which was signed on Sunday, comes into effect, much more imported cheese will be allowed to enter Canada duty-free from the Continent. And farmers worry that this one dent in their defenses could be the beginning of the end for supply management.

Later the article cites an estimate of over $200 per year in additional costs for dairy products for the average Canadian farmer, or roughly $.50 a day.  Some speculations:

So the Canadian system probably maintains a lot of smaller family dairies, farms which have been lost in the U.S. as dairies got bigger and bigger.  (Maybe I'll get ambitious and research the point--looks like 11,000 farms averaging about 90 cows.  It's hard to get comparable data but a quick skim of this says my generalizations seem valid. This seems to say that there's proportionately more organic dairies/cows in the US..)  The food movement would like that.  But the dairy products in the grocery stores are likely rather generic; with supply management protecting a farmer's place in the economy, there's little incentive to experiment with organic milk, raw milk, or niche cheeses.  The food movement won't like that.

The bottom line, very tentatively, is: families can pay more to preserve family farms or pay more for choice of milk products (i.e., organic).  The downside of supply management is the higher prices apply to all; the upside of the US system is consumers can choose whether to pay the premium prices for organic.