One field will make it!

[parsley]

What is funny about it is this fran...supply management sets their own price. Consumers have no choice.

So why in the world would supply management set up organic dairies?

They HAVE CAPTIVE BUYERS.(Not that I like that.)

Ahhh,it tells me that consumers are demanding the organic milk.

At least that's the way I view it.

[Fransisco]

"Some" consumers.

[Choice2U]

I'll let Parsley service the canadian organic market and I'll service other paying markets like US,Japan...we both have our niche....oh but wait, I can't do that without going through the CWB.

[parsley]

choic2u,

We're in the ame boat. Organic has to drop some cash at the door of the CWB's Marketing Department, too.

Years ago, the CWB wouldn't touch organic with a ten foot pole. But now that they see high value markets, consumer demand and growing supply, they want in on the cash cow, so they market organic. Opportunism at its' worst.

[darren442]

Can't understand this conventional vs organic farming at all. Most organic farmers were once conventional and they chooose another way. they have worked very hard using there mind to grow a crop. Now organic farmers do not take a back seat to conventional farming thats a fact.

Conventioanl farming uses chemicals and fertilizer to mass produce crops and get maximum yield at the end of the day.


I think that both ways have there place and if every conventional farmer had 80 acres organic the knowledge they could apply to the conventional ways would be a huge value. I don't knock either and there are is a place for both. And being pig headed about either way just hows how uninformed some of us are. As long as you are happy at the end of the day then leave it alone.

But here is a thought to think about. In the spring of this year when all the crops were barely out of the ground and thing s were looking very very bad. Who felt more stress the guy who had 20 bucks an acre for a bill or the guy who had 125 for a bill that still had to be paid.

My hats off to ALL farmers organic and conventional.

[checking]

Darren442, how far did the push go to get organic farmers to use organic seed as their growing stock? Did it get beyond the organic grower having to contact three of his organic buddies, who they knew didn't grow flax, to ask if they had some for sale at the mention $50.00 to $60.00/bushel level? Is it still going on that it is then okay to proceed down the road to the conventional flax grower to buy his (heaven forbid) sprayed on flax to sow on an organic field? If that isn't still happening, then how do you arrive at a bill of 20 bucks an acre for spring organic seeding? Better yet, how do you whitewash it over with your organic consumers who think they are buying the real deal from seed to plate?

[Hopperbin]

Darren also how would the organic small grain producer be feeling when after plowing down 3 crops feel when his 4th is not growing well?

[Hopperbin]

Like I said earlier, organic is drawing on crop insurance. To the consumer they say otherwise but from what most of us see it is so. So what I ask is where is the agronomics? If it was so simple and worked then more farmers would be doing it and producing less and we would all be better off. No need to fill consumers with crap.

[parsley]

Not speaking for others, but haven't had crop insurance, carried a little at one time, but mainly when we farmed conventionally.

[parsley]

checking,
I presume if a seed growers' traditional seed is good enough for consumers when it is grown in Field A, wouldn't it still be good enough when it is grown in Field B?

Organics' emphasis and concern has been on not buying seed that is modified; BUT with regards to seed that has not been genetically modified, organic growers, as do other farmers, admire seed growers for their dedication to purity and uniformity and selection, and quality of seed.

Isn't that what a seed grower does best?

You may, at some time, if you manufacture pancake mixes, specify that you do not want any genetically modified wheat seed from a seed grower with the garlic gene in it.

I just don't want the modified wheat.

But the seed grower does an exemplary job of differentiation, does he not? The ones in my part of the world do.

Organic growers do try first, to buy seed from organic seed farms. Twenty years ago, one probably did not exist. Pars

[checking]

100 - So Parsley, would you agree that since you are an honest organic grower that you would inform your customer that there is a little bit of something conventional in everything you grow? Would you also admit that you are not getting away with a spring seeding expense of $20.00/acre?

[parsley]

checking,

The way an audit trail works for organic is this....if I buy registered seed from a registered seed grower, say you, I list it. It becomes part of the audit trail. I think that's a good thing. Some seed growers have even worked hard to establish themselves as organic.

Organics is about saying to the consumer, "Look, here is who's grown and handled and shipped your food,what we've done, to the best of our ability."

Seed growers are a very very important part of the audit trail. And they have worked hard to be credible and grow with excellence! What consumer would not be pleased?

I don't assume that "Who felt more stress the guy who had 20 bucks an acre for a bill or the guy who had 125 for a bill that still had to be paid" was referring to seed! (There is organic ferttilizer....green manuring, or planting a piece of land to a nitrogen fixating crop such as sainfoin.)

Actually, checking, we can benefit each other. After all, we're just farmers living beside each other in the same community. Some have goats. Some have cows. Some have garlic.

Kinda like life. Pars

[parsley]

btw, I'm not 100, and I have a little bit of spunk in me yet. LOL

But all certified organic seed, all of it, was grown on ordinary farms at one time or another.

Harrington barley, for example, was bred by plant breeder. It was grown and exanded by seed growers. It was grown by cowboys, too! It was saved. It is still grown On a plain old ordinary farm. And on an organic farm. The organic farm charts it.

But the organic farm does not want genetically modified wheat.

[checking]

Would an agrarian grower care to enlighten the industrial guys as to what their real cost of production is? I use, as a yardstick, my neighbour who for all intents is really a half and half guy. Summerfallow isn't cheap, and certainly discing in a legume can't be done for 20 bucks an acre. I'm tempted to say that your costs are not that much less than my own. But hey, I can be forgiven because I'm under stress. (lol)

[parsley]

Every kind of farming is expensive!

Half and half guys? Hmmm.

Stress? With all that pipeline income you should be<p></p>
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