What’s good for the land is what’s good for your health”
--Organic Valley
Organic farming is seeping into the mainstream and according
to many, will need to become the new
conventional way to farm. It’s quite
simple really--organic farming allows for sustainability. Organic
Valley, the nation’s largest farmer
coop is working hard to bring the small family-owned farm back. And it’s been quite successful in doing
so. Organic
Valley started in 1988 with 7
family-owned farms and has grown to 1149 farmer families. The cooperative was started in response to
the 600,000 small farms lost to the industrialization of farming since 1960. Their central mission is “to support rural
communities by protecting the health of the family farm—working toward both
economic and environmental sustainability.”
The Organic Valley
solution to the woes of small farmers (that being the coop) seems to be a good
one that is gaining public support.
But the question of economics still lingers over the farming
industry. However, it is no longer (and
in my opinion should never have been) a question of quick payoff. In the words of Organic
Valley: “Chemical-intensive
conventional farming creates high yields of cheap food in the short term, but
the cost is our compromised ecosystems and squandered natural resources. It
creates a debt that we and our children can ill afford to repay.” Conventional, or factory farming, relies on
methods that cause rapid loss of topsoil, sooner rather than later, rendering
the land unusable; it requires massive amounts of antibiotics, pesticides,
machinery, etc. It is the large-scale equivalent
to selling some old CDs to make a quick buck, you make a few dollars, yes, but
the CDs run out fast with no means of producing more. The Earth’s resources are being over-used and
if factory farming continues to dominate the market, we will nearly be out of
fertile land, and very soon. The problem
with pumping animals full of antibiotics and hormones is multi-fold. The first and most obvious is a problem that
humans are facing as well—overuse of antibiotics causes bacteria to mutate into
strands that are immune to present medication.
The unhealthy conditions and synthetic injections endured by livestock
are passed on to the humans that ingest them, or their milk or eggs. Poor animal health equals poor human
health.
In organic farming both the land and the animals are kept
healthy and relatively happy. If soil is
built organically, it develops its own natural defense against insects, fungus,
and disease, thus eliminating, or nearly eliminating the need for harmful
chemicals. The same goes for the animals
on a farm. If they are kept healthy from
the beginning, there is no, or much less need for expensive and toxic chemicals
or medication. The overall effect of
organic, small-scale farming is that the land is sustainable, animals can
produce products such as milk and eggs for many more years than the unhealthy
animals of factory farms, and the local market, as well as national economy
benefits greatly.
The organic food industry, according to Organic
Valley, is worth $14.5 billion this
past year and is growing by 20% each year.
While this only accounts for a little more than 2% of American food
sales, it’s a booming market with a lot of potential. This is what companies like Organic
Valley are trying to teach. The small-farm market and organic foods
market have a place in the economy and farmer coops are an effective solution
to the dying family farm, which has been a factor of the ill health of the
environment as a whole, and all the animals living in it (that includes, of
course, humans). Organic farming is a
way to try to reverse the detrimental effects that factory farming has had on
agriculture and community. It also
provides people a way to protect their own health and the health of generations
to come while giving the public a choice of how their food is produced.
Check out their website at: http://www.organicvalley.coop/index.html