I'm in a sustainable agriculture class and I was wondering if you guys buy organic produce, meat, dairy, etc. Do you guys think its legit or just a bunch of BS and a marketing scheme? Just curious what other people think.
I don't but my wife does. ;-) We are trying to avoid the GMO stuff. Preservatives. Animals with antibiotics and hormones. Grass fed beef us another thing we are trying to use. It doesn't have to be organic per say. We just dint like where the stuff I mention above is going. Our fruits and veggies are not organic unless we buy from a farmers market which is what we try to do as much as possible. Alot if products are labeled organic when they are nothing different so you have to be careful I suggest watching the documentary "Food inc. " It is on Netflix. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
"Organic" has been bastardized into mass production. We try to buy food that is as.... -local -chemical free -hormone free -the least processed ... as possible. Some of that has "organic" on it. Some does not.
take the most organic thing ever grown and put it in a gas cromatography/ mass spectrometry machine and it is made of hundreds of chemicals, there is not a single thing you can think of that is not made of chemicals. local does not always mean better for the environment, for example my friend lives is the lower mainland of British columbia, LOTS of hippies there. lots of people there buy locally produced food. they do not produce a lot of alfalfa there so they have to truck in enormous amounts of feed to feed cattle locally from a long distance away. so in sted of bringing in one semi load of beef from Alberta they bring in ten semi loads of hay to produce the one semi load worth of beef... as an added bonus here in Saskatchewan we sell hay for 40-50 dollars a ton, in bc it is over 400 dollars a ton because of all the shipping.. so not only did they manage to produce the beef at an enormous cost it is also ten times the co2 because of all the trucking.
I have friends with a farm in goshen New York. They are certified organic. They don't use a single chemical. It's all natural. Some of the best tasting produce I've ever had. And I get to hunt the farm so it's an extra bonus for me
Most of it is just marketing. The definition of "organic" is being stretched each day. There are a few things we buy organic, mostly fruits and vegetables, but that is mostly because the organic ones just look better in the store. I also have my own organic garden. I know it's truly organic, and I like being able to just walk out my back door, pick some spinach, and cook it for dinner.
Define organic! As often as not, it only means the word "Organic" is written on the label so the price can be doubled or tripled. We raise much of our own veggies as organically as possible. I don't get as high a yield as others so I just plant more of it; thankfully I have the space to do so. As far as buying organic from some stranger who claims it is organic... Not a chance.
We grow our own veggies in the summer, and can what we don't eat for winter consumption. We raise our own grain fed black angus beef because strictly grass fed beef means a skinny cow with no marbling and in my opinion tastes nothing like a grain fed cow. We've got access to local farm fresh eggs and a few good farmers markets for honey and other veggies we haven't grown ourselves. I refuse to pay the extra for "organic" at the grocery store.
I guess its doesn't have to exactly be organic certified, but sustainable as well. The idea of organic is nice, but it's pretty well tainted by larger corporations who lobby for certain standards to be made in order to be organic certified and certain chemicals to be organic approved so that they can come in and take over the organic market. Local, sustainable produce seems to be the better route if you want better things to eat without paying an arm and a leg to have the word "organic" in front of whatever you buy.
chemical and sustainable are not two oposite ends of a spectrum, and I have seen organic farming methods that are not sustainable at all and ruin the land
Certainly grow as much as I can in the summer, we can or freeze the extra for winter and try to harvest all the wild game and fish I can. Our small town grocery store buys alot of its produce and dairy locally grown when possible and I buy that, best part being they dont jack the price. Actually its often cheaper, and always better.
I love the folks who sell free-range eggs for $3.00 or more a dozen when larger eggs are half that price at the grocery store. I often wonder if they don't buy them at Walmart, throw a little chicken poop on them and sell them to their friends as free-range.
I sell eggs for as much as 5.25 per dozen. The store I sell them to sells them for nearly $6 per dozen. They sell out so fast that there is a call list to let people know when the eggs are on the shelves. I'm not a certified organic grower, and honestly, I could never meet the criteria. Some of the criteria are made just to keep smaller/poorer producers from qualifying. For instance, my chickens could not have any access to any ground that had touched treated lumber in the past two years. That's stupid. I also do not use any antibiotics or other chemicals in/on my chickens other than one time putting some Neosporin on a chicken that had been bitten by a 'possum. She was an old girl that didn't lay anymore anyways but it still would be a violation. Also, because I don't destroy my chickens at 70 weeks like the 'real' egg farms do, I will be needing to eventually use some wormer on my old birds. Because after free ranging for two or three years some of them do start to acquire enough cooties that they should be treated. There is no 'organic' wormer. The organic solution is to kill the birds. I will end up doing the older girls in, but before that, I'm going to worm them. Screw you organic standards! lol I also grow produce. Much of it will not be exposed to any chemicals but some will. All the fertilizer is manure and carp. My primary crop is a type of winter squash. We have three types of corn rootworm, the various cucumber beetles and loads of squash bugs. I will spray insecticides on the young squash plants to keep them from being killed. Spraying drops off to next to none once the plants start to flower. (so I don't kill bees) Only in a few extreme cases will I spray any developing squash. I simply cannot afford to use the 'organic' pesticides or I would choose that route. In the past we have planted Bt sweet corn here. Bt corn is a gmo which makes it's own type of Bt and kills earworms. If I were going to go into the business of selling sweet corn, it would be my corn of choice. Sure it's a gmo... but regular sweet corn often requires massive amounts of insecticide. So... pick your poison. They say that sweet corn makes up less than 1% of the corn crop in the USA but accounts for 40% of the insecticides used. Those insecticides are often the type that kill all insects, both good and bad. .....so after all that rambling. I believe, if you can, support local and sustainable farming..... and whenever possible, raise your own damn food. :D
Once you've tasted a real farm fresh egg there's no going back to the watery Walmart yolks. Ours typically run 2$ a dozen but we're also very rural and lots of folks have chickens here.
I do prefer farm raised eggs and can usually buy eggs for around $2.00-2.50 (not organic free rangers though) but honestly so many people in different churches give me eggs that we can't use them all, plus we have a few chickens that give us eggs as well. We do raise our own veggies, pick wild blackberries, can figs and pepper sauces, and freeze deer and fish. It's amazing how much food all that adds up to and we aren't even real intentional about it. I try not to use pesticides either on our veggies except a little sevin dust but I do treat for fire-ants. They are really bad down here, especially after wet weather.
