Why don’t more farmers become USDA certified organic? A recent chain on an old-school email list-serv has been focusing on exactly this question. For the sake of this conversation (and many others), USDA organic is generally a reliable stand-in for ecological farming, regenerative farming, etc. — anything other than conventional systems that haven’t (yet!) recognized the importance of soil biology. There are of course differences in these methodologies, but there are also many similarities.
The participants on the list-serv agreed that in the long-term, an organic system is superior to a conventional chemical-only one, both agronomically and economically.
The reasons farmers put forth for the reluctance of themselves and others to go organic were varied, though. Land is a commodity, and with today’s prices and year-to-year cash leases, farmers aren’t incentivized to think long term. The cost of transition can also be an issue — if only short-term thinking is involved. Marketing is also more difficult for organic, both because the market itself is smaller and because of necessary (albeit bureaucratically onerous) regulations and the separate supply chain. Difficulty in procuring seed and fertilizer was also mentioned — falling in the same bucket of the separate supply chain. Peer pressure — being the weird one in the coffee shop — is undoubtedly a factor as well.
But most participants seemed to agree that the biggest reason more farmers and ranchers don’t transition to an organic/ecological/regenerative system is more fundamental: farming conventionally is easy, and farming in tune with nature is hard.
One member of the discussion group related a presentation he had been at with some fellow crop consultants, listening to researchers from a Midwest land-grant university talk about how glyphosate use was decreasing yields because of resistant weeds. The consultants with him said, “Duh!” They knew chemicals were losing their clients yield. But they kept doing it because it was so much easier than the alternative. The entire system — from government policy to the corporations selling the products — encourages simply pushing the easy button. To be a better farmer requires harder work, greater knowledge and a keener sense of observation.
Our aim at Acres U.S.A. is to provide that knowledge, through sharing the stories of farmers, agronomists, and researchers who’ve learned the intricacies of working together with nature instead of against it.
We seek to do that again in this issue. Bob Jones Jr. of The Chef’s Garden in Ohio describes how his family has successfully grown and marketed diverse vegetables for decades. Steve Diver digs into how growers can profitably use natural and organic herbicides for select applications on the farm. Acres U.S.A. owner Taylor Henry shares his lessons for managing cattle during the dreaded mud season, and Mark Shepard begins a series on the ecological principles farmers need to understand, beginning with disturbance and succession. And Patrick Freeze discusses his research on heavy metals and shares techniques for reducing them in your soil.
As another farming season begins, here’s to working smarter, harder, and ecologically. And that’s the view from the country.
