# "We Can't Be Organic Because"....



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

From Growing TN.

Regards, Mike

http://growingtennessee.com/video/2017/05/we-cant-be-organic-because/?utm_source=Growing+Tennessee&utm_campaign=d108bca2bf-growingtennessee-daily_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d75710df8e-d108bca2bf-296641129


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

The non organic guys around here are struggling bad. My mechanic also works at a local dairy, they've informed him they're officially in survival mode, 8(?) generations. Yet the organics are still going strong.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

at, I think it might be like the voting body of this country.....people are organic inclined on the left and right coasts and most of the rest of us in-between can take it or leave it. 

Regards, Mike


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

IN other words, if you have liberal left leaning tendencies....you may be inclined to use organic.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

So why are you fellows all not organic? For me it is not wanting to do paperwork and deal with the hassle of getting certified. Also I fear the gamble that it will cost more to become organic then I will get out of it. Especially since I sell mostly to the horse market. As crazy as horsey people can be I don't think many are crazy enough to want organic hay or pay extra for their horses. Some probably are, but the majority aren't. Yet anyways. I should pose the question on a Facebook hay sale page that has a lot of crazy horsey people on it. I think I would try being organic on grass hay first. Just gotta find organic fertilizer that works as well or better then conventional at similar costs. I don't spray for weeds or bugs in grass hay so that isn't an issue. If people pay nearly double for organic milk would they pay double for organic hay? We buy organic bread for our house. Not because of the organic part of it. But because it has less preservatives in it. I feel its kind of odd that the average whole wheat bread here can sit in a bag for a couple weeks or more and not mold. But the organic kind as well as when I make homemade bread will mold in a few days if not used. I certainly don't use organic ingredients when making bread.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

I see it as a niche market....as soon as folks start pouring into the market, the price will be driven down along with the supposed profits. Besides that, it's incredibly hard to grow anything here without copious NPK.....not sure they's enuf chicken farms and hog farms to supply the demand now


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

atgreene said:


> The non organic guys around here are struggling bad. My mechanic also works at a local dairy, they've informed him they're officially in survival mode, 8(?) generations. Yet the organics are still going strong


Agree , There is a shortage of organic food , They say corn comes from China to supply all the organic poultry growers in the U.S.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

I know when they get sick cattle some where just selling the sick cattle to a conventnal dairy cheap ,because the organic farm cant use antibiotics.


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## Bishop (Apr 6, 2015)

I wouldn't trust imported "organic" feed. So many people are willing to lie to make a buck. At the Farmers' Market where we sell flowers I'm getting tired of the lying by fellow vendors.

I think the only way to really get organic food is to grow a garden.


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## Farmerbrown2 (Sep 25, 2018)

I agree all the scandals the Chinese have had over melamine in milk and other crap in there chocolate I don't trust them to provide organic anything. We don't let our kids to eat any food or candy from out of the border.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

farmerbrown said:


> I agree all the scandals the Chinese have had over melamine in milk and other crap in there chocolate I don't trust them to provide organic anything. We don't let our kids to eat any food or candy from out of the border.


I tell people that all the time, you want less pesticides on your food, then don't buy stuff from countries that are still using stuff that was banned here decades ago.

Like already pointed out, the more people in organic, the lower the price will be, simple supply and demand. So lets work a little harder, fill out more paperwork, and still break even, maybe.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Demand for organic here is not split along political lines. Many of the people most suspicious of a large government prefer organic locally grown products so they have minimal interference with what's in their food


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

We aren't organic certified, but could be if I swapped the pig and chicken grain to organic. For us, it wouldn't improve our sales, as we can't keep up now there's no point in changing, yet.

There isn't a lot of obvious connection between political parties and our customers. I think most want big government and big business out of their lives, so they support the little guy. Much like me, they have no use for either political party or wall street/big business and prefer their money stays local out of the hands of robber barons.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

endrow said:


> Agree , There is a shortage of organic food , They say corn comes from China to supply all the organic poultry growers in the U.S.


Interesting....you can import "organic" food from other countries that surely don't have stringent regulations or enforcement concerning the labeling of foodstuff.....that opens up Pandora's box.


slowzuki said:


> Demand for organic here is not split along political lines. Many of the people most suspicious of a large government prefer organic locally grown products so they have minimal interference with what's in their food


I get the locally grown part, folks in these parts are the same, but why would people that are "most suspicious of big brother" care whether or not it was organic? Are they a feared of their government hurting them physically through the food chain? I just don't get the connection.....


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Some days I think organic eating all that bad but I don't know how we'd ever transition to a... we grow a fair amount of corn and since this water quality addition to Atrazine . Atrazine cannot be used within 50 feet of a well. So we have about 10 fields we have to arrive there with the burn down product in minus the atrazine spray one time around the field then put the atrazine in and spray the remainder of the field. Probably 65% of the fields we Farm how the house somewhere on the perimeter and it's really getting to be tricky and in regards to that and the restrictions and setbacks...


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

Organics and "home grown" is a real shifty shady business.

My Mom's cousin has a big grain operation. He had a guy coming in from 3 hours away for a while and buying a semi load of soybeans. Guy would pull out cash and pay. He passed MANY other places he could have bought beans at. He came for a while till the cousin started to chit chat with him. Then he wouldn't come around much. Cousin finally put two and two together. He owned a BIG organic dairy in Ohio. He was coming to PA and buying conventional beans, hauling them home and feeding his herd....

Buddy was selling at a local farmers market. It was a market that you could only sell items YOU grew on YOUR farm. Guy started out this way, then realized he couldn't grow enough to make a living. Next thing you know the neighbor was raising chickens and eggs for him. He was buying raspberries at produce auction for the farmers market. By the time I lost contact with him he was actually buying produce through a wholesale broker to sell at this "Homegrown Farmers market"..I guess it all comes full circle though cause he ended up cheating on his wife and she packed up and left, and took the kids with her...


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Re the guys suspicious of the government, they don't trust the processes that approved the pesticides and gmo and honestly the science behind it. Many like to hunt their meats or raise their own if they have land. It's an interesting bridge to the hippie type customers.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

PaMike said:


> Organics and "home grown" is a real shifty shady business.
> My Mom's cousin has a big grain operation. He had a guy coming in from 3 hours away for a while and buying a semi load of soybeans. Guy would pull out cash and pay. He passed MANY other places he could have bought beans at. He came for a while till the cousin started to chit chat with him. Then he wouldn't come around much. Cousin finally put two and two together. He owned a BIG organic dairy in Ohio. He was coming to PA and buying conventional beans, hauling them home and feeding his herd....
> Buddy was selling at a local farmers market. It was a market that you could only sell items YOU grew on YOUR farm. Guy started out this way, then realized he couldn't grow enough to make a living. Next thing you know the neighbor was raising chickens and eggs for him. He was buying raspberries at produce auction for the farmers market. By the time I lost contact with him he was actually buying produce through a wholesale broker to sell at this "Homegrown Farmers market"..I guess it all comes full circle though cause he ended up cheating on his wife and she packed up and left, and took the kids with her...


 I fear that people made a mess with this not good


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

somedevildawg said:


> I see it as a niche market....as soon as folks start pouring into the market, the price will be driven down along with the supposed profits. Besides that, it's incredibly hard to grow anything here without copious NPK.....not sure they's enuf chicken farms and hog farms to supply the demand now


Yeah, I learned that real quick when I looked into getting chicken litter to fertilize hay patches here on the place years ago...

We've got a HUGE egg producer about 13 miles away (and thank goodness they ARE that far away-- the stink would gag a maggot in summer, especially when they're pumping BLACK WATER out of their lagoons through sideroll impact sprinkler irrigators onto their "organic" bermudagrass hayfields surrounding the layer houses... YECCH!!!!) Anyway, went in and talked to one of their "salesmen" about dry chicken litter... He quoted me the prices, did some calcs and told me how much I'd need (about four semi loads) and asked about my tractor, since they rent the spreader with the loads (nobody here has manure spreaders, none to be had at sales either-- just never used here). Said I'd be okay with my 5610S's if I just "half loaded" the spreader... I thanked him for his time, took the quotes, and left.

Later I was at home and started doing the math... figured the analysis he gave me versus cost per ton, and was SURPRISED when it came out SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER than just getting regular dry NPK blend from the local seed/chem/fert dealer... I called the guy back and said, "Well, I think I must be missing something-- I've figured this analysis vs. cost-per-ton you quoted, and I'm coming out a lot higher than just using commercial fertilizer... what gives-- what am I doing wrong??"

He tells me, "no, that's right... if you're figuring on a typical blend at (whatever recent price) dollars a ton, yeah, we're about 20-25% higher in cost..."

I was VERY perplexed, and said, "Umm-kay-- thought manure was cheaper..." He said, "Yeah, it USED to be, but now we can sell all we can produce to ORGANIC RICE farmers that need a lot of NPK, and those guys CANNOT use commercial fertilizer... it MUST be manure/organic type fertilizer for them to maintain their organic certification, so we can sell all our dry manure at a premium to those guys..." "Ah, okay, well, thanks for your time.", I said as I hung up...

Sure is a long way from the days when they were practically GIVING the stuff away and begging people to take it just so they could get rid of it! Didn't take a PhD to figure out I'd be WAY ahead to just get a few tons in a slinger spreader from the fertilizer dealer, run down there in the pickup and tow the machine back to the house myself, rather than have to deal with FOUR SEMI-LOADS of stinking chicken shit at a HIGHER COST to get the same fertility levels...

IMHO it's that kind of STUPIDITY that I couldn't deal with being organic... In addition to the fact that they've made it a CASH-COW "industry unto itself"; ie the "organic certification" is a RACKET designed to make a shit-ton of money for the certifiers, their agencies, and the "regulators" overseeing it all. It's mostly needless hoops to jump through that they charge you out the gazoo to jump through, IOW, skimming "their share" off the profits through the expensive and cumbersome certification process...

A plant doesn't care WHAT the source of NPK is, so long as its soluble and in a form the plant can use. The plant doesn't care if it's from chicken shit, hog shit, cattle shit, ammonia, urea, etc.etc.etc... it's just got to be mobile in the soil for uptake in a form the plant can use. Makes no difference to the plant, SO WHY should it make a difference to the idiot eating it (in the case of vegetables grown in it) and EVEN MORE SO when it's "second hand" and their eating the MEAT grown off the GRASS (or other forage) that doesn't care what the source of fertility was that grew the grass it ate?? (and the grass SURE didn't care what the nutrient source was!) It's ASININE...

Sorry, I just have a LOW TOLERANCE for STUPIDITY. If other guys want to deal with it and can make a buck off it, MORE POWER TO THEM...

I can sorta see the point of folks that prefer "no pesticides" or "no antibiotics, no artificial hormones, etc." type products... we don't use any of that stuff either if we can help it, and no more than absolutely necessary. We didn't spray any more than we had to (and rarely used insecticides, though we used "normal" amounts of herbicides) when we were growing row crops, and we've only recently started spraying pastures on a wide scale to improve the grass and reduce weeds... though we have been spraying Remedy/diesel basal bark treatments to kill unwanted trees and brush for years, and hit the fencelines with Sahara once or twice a year... We don't use antibiotics unless it's a "cure 'em or kill 'em" situation...

We don't use any more of the stuff than we have to, but I sure as h3ll wouldn't "swear off" the stuff entirely for what we DO use it for, not without one h3ll of a good reason! Certainly not for the BS reasons that 98% of this "organic" line of BS touts...

Later! OL J R


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

luke strawwalker said:


> Yeah, I learned that real quick when I looked into getting chicken litter to fertilize hay patches here on the place years ago...
> 
> We've got a HUGE egg producer about 13 miles away (and thank goodness they ARE that far away-- the stink would gag a maggot in summer, especially when they're pumping BLACK WATER out of their lagoons through sideroll impact sprinkler irrigators onto their "organic" bermudagrass hayfields surrounding the layer houses... YECCH!!!!) Anyway, went in and talked to one of their "salesmen" about dry chicken litter... He quoted me the prices, did some calcs and told me how much I'd need (about four semi loads) and asked about my tractor, since they rent the spreader with the loads (nobody here has manure spreaders, none to be had at sales either-- just never used here). Said I'd be okay with my 5610S's if I just "half loaded" the spreader... I thanked him for his time, took the quotes, and left.
> 
> ...


There is a large egg producer near here. They make more money on the chicken litter then the eggs.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Teslan said:


> There is a large egg producer near here. They make more money on the chicken litter then the eggs.


There is large one near here that used to sell it but decided he would buy the land to put it on also.Last I heard he is at over 45,000 acres.

He wanted to build another one in SD and it was shot down by the community.

http://www.keloland.com/news/article/news/sonstegard-foods-chicken-farm-will-have-no-impact


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

I just bought in 200 ton of chicken manure. Yes, I could buy npk by the pallet a little cheaper. The difference is when we had the drought last 2 years, most of my fields that I had spread manure and compost on were able to hold enough moisture to give me a decent crop. Friends who had not built their soils up with humus were struggling. For us, the price isn't that much different, I have a singer for my manure and compost, when fuel prices spike and fertilizer spikes, I'm still in position to spread manure, and I prefer the long view of building soil and microorganisms.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Teslan said:


> There is a large egg producer near here. They make more money on the chicken litter then the eggs.


I can believe it...

Sold grain to them when I was row cropping... 13 miles was half the distance to the next closest elevator, plus they paid a premium...

So long as the grain was clean you were golden... we had one year where it was VERY dry most of the growing season, sorghum didn't exert itself (come up out of the whorl of leaves) and then we got a gulf storm that blew and rained hard enough to lean everything over to 45 degrees and keep it soaking wet for a week... grain got some mold on it.

Hauled a load and was turned away with "xearlenone"... asked WTF "xearlenone" was, honcho gives me a long legal size sheet of paper with these charts/graphs and huge chain molecule diagrams across the top, turns out "xearlenone" is some kind of fungus that's not an issue with feeding hogs or cattle or even broilers, but for laying chickens it messes up eggshell formation, so they sent me down the road to the other elevator...

Later! OL J R


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

There is a big layer or broiler farm I forget which in the middle of the state that has a manure auction every year. They have been doing it for a about 5 years now. First time they tried to do the auction they couldn't get an auctioneer to do it. Finally convinced an auctioneer to do it, and it took off. They post the analysis of the manure, and the tonnage. I think they average somewhere around $15/ton,and they have thousands of tons...


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

$15/ton is generally what it brings in this area.....except there is none close anymore.

Regards, Mike


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

Vol said:


> $15/ton is generally what it brings in this area.....except there is none close anymore.
> 
> Regards, Mike


A young guy that used to farm a couple farms over from me moved up state where ground is cheap and its way more rural. He hired a guy full time to drive a walking floor truck down to this area. Its about 2 hrs one way. He brings hay down in the trailer, then swings over to a large farm where he can load up chicken manure for $5/ton to haul back home. He claims the cost savings over fertilizer pays for the truckers wage, and the hay customer taking the delivery pays for the truck/fuel/insurance etc...

In this area, manure is a love/hate relationship. Saves on input cost but the bay cleanup efforts make paperwork a real pain...


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