Further to Parsley's posts on organic I would like to add my comments from a beef producers perspective.
The debate on the other thread was so much like the situation in the beef industry. Conventional producers looking for a way to discredit the science behind organic, critisizing the weeds and at the same time in other threads bemoaning being screwed by the CWB, the weather, the machinery manufacturers, the fertilizer dealers, the Europeans who won't buy GMO etc etc.
All the time you are missing the point - there are consumers out there prepared to pay you very good money to do things differently because it's important to them. It is their money and their perceptions that are important not our preconceived ideas based on what worked in the past.
In the beef (likely hogs too) sector it's the same, an industry bankrupting itself by the day complaining about the high dollar, high grain prices, lack of EU market access for hormone treated beef etc, etc. All the time ignoring customer demand.
We have built a market in recent years for direct marketed grass-fed beef and now pasture-pork also. We raise them this way to meet consumer requirements - there are a growing number of people prepared to pay us $900-$1000 for a half of our beef without even having tasted it before. This shows how desperate consumers are for alternatives to conventional production. Many of them turn around after tasting the product and order more right away because it was so much better than their expectations. We like to give our customers a good deal so don't price it too expensive - if we charged the average beef retail price in Canada we would bank TWICE what we would get selling the same cattle into the commodity beef system even with the outrageous processing costs we have to pay.
There is so much money to be made in the production of food if only we can shed the tattered coat of the commodity market off our backs. I guess for most though it's easier to fail conventionally than to try and succeed by being unconventional.
A final word on organic Parsley, I think we are broadly in agreement on the issues here but in my opinion the organic rules on beef in Canada are very poorly thought out. We are essentially organic but would fail audit because we source our winter forage off our chemical-rich Hutterite colony neighbors. On the other hand our grass-fed is produced by cattle out on lush green pasture whereas organic can be produced in a feedlot, on a high grain ration as long as the grain used is certified organic. If I were organic I couldn't haul farm yard manure in from neighbors that don't feed certified organic grain - what nonsense how can farm yard manure not be organic? We get many questions on our organic status and when I explain that we are hormone, antibiotic free, grass-fed and reared on pasture the customers all agree that's the beef they want - that's what they think organic is, not a system that allows for feedlot fattening on grain with all the nutrient problems, fossil fuel burning problems that can bring. We have never lost a customer looking for organic when we explain our system is beyond organic. Again it's a question of listening to the consumer. In my opinion the organic beef productions rules in Canada are stupid and wrong - they were not designed to provide what the consumer wants. We are all in manufacturing and sales - and in both these the customer is always right. It's time to start listening to the consumer instead of bitching about things we have no control over.
The debate on the other thread was so much like the situation in the beef industry. Conventional producers looking for a way to discredit the science behind organic, critisizing the weeds and at the same time in other threads bemoaning being screwed by the CWB, the weather, the machinery manufacturers, the fertilizer dealers, the Europeans who won't buy GMO etc etc.
All the time you are missing the point - there are consumers out there prepared to pay you very good money to do things differently because it's important to them. It is their money and their perceptions that are important not our preconceived ideas based on what worked in the past.
In the beef (likely hogs too) sector it's the same, an industry bankrupting itself by the day complaining about the high dollar, high grain prices, lack of EU market access for hormone treated beef etc, etc. All the time ignoring customer demand.
We have built a market in recent years for direct marketed grass-fed beef and now pasture-pork also. We raise them this way to meet consumer requirements - there are a growing number of people prepared to pay us $900-$1000 for a half of our beef without even having tasted it before. This shows how desperate consumers are for alternatives to conventional production. Many of them turn around after tasting the product and order more right away because it was so much better than their expectations. We like to give our customers a good deal so don't price it too expensive - if we charged the average beef retail price in Canada we would bank TWICE what we would get selling the same cattle into the commodity beef system even with the outrageous processing costs we have to pay.
There is so much money to be made in the production of food if only we can shed the tattered coat of the commodity market off our backs. I guess for most though it's easier to fail conventionally than to try and succeed by being unconventional.
A final word on organic Parsley, I think we are broadly in agreement on the issues here but in my opinion the organic rules on beef in Canada are very poorly thought out. We are essentially organic but would fail audit because we source our winter forage off our chemical-rich Hutterite colony neighbors. On the other hand our grass-fed is produced by cattle out on lush green pasture whereas organic can be produced in a feedlot, on a high grain ration as long as the grain used is certified organic. If I were organic I couldn't haul farm yard manure in from neighbors that don't feed certified organic grain - what nonsense how can farm yard manure not be organic? We get many questions on our organic status and when I explain that we are hormone, antibiotic free, grass-fed and reared on pasture the customers all agree that's the beef they want - that's what they think organic is, not a system that allows for feedlot fattening on grain with all the nutrient problems, fossil fuel burning problems that can bring. We have never lost a customer looking for organic when we explain our system is beyond organic. Again it's a question of listening to the consumer. In my opinion the organic beef productions rules in Canada are stupid and wrong - they were not designed to provide what the consumer wants. We are all in manufacturing and sales - and in both these the customer is always right. It's time to start listening to the consumer instead of bitching about things we have no control over.
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