Got a Voice?
Mar/083
Last week the North Carolina Dept. of Agriculture and the North Carolina Farm Bureau teamed up to announce an initiative to save the state’s dairy industry. The program, Dairy Advantage, comes in the form of a 28-page report on options and strategies for small dairies to compete in the modern milk marketplace. Search the entire document and you know how many times the word “organic†comes up? Zero.
That’s right, zero. There are at least seven dairies in NC that have been certified organic in the last year, all of them small conventional family dairies that converted to organic with the help of the Organic Valley Family of Farms and the CROPP Cooperative. Here are seven success stories, living proof that organic milk can be produced in our region, and that our dairy farms can take advantage of the growing market for this healthy, wholesome milk. These dairies are role models for other family farms, especially in the mountains and foothills of the Carolinas where farm and herd sizes naturally tend to the optimal size for organic operations.
And yet the Dept. of Ag. and the Farm Bureau don’t even mention organic dairying as an alternative for saving our dwindling supply of family dairies. Not to mention raw milk options, which are verboten under the state’s antiquated public health dogma.
Why the disconnect? It’s tempting to assume a conspiracy, and yet it’s really more likely that the reason is somewhat less sinister, if no less disturbing. The agriculture establishment in the Carolinas is just not used to thinking in terms of sustainability. The (mostly) men and women who run that establishment have been trained in a conventional system, based on conventional agribusiness wisdom, for a generation. That wisdom predicts that only a food system modeled on industrial processes can survive. They’re not used to thinking about an agriculture that isn’t dependent on massive subsidies, synthetic controls, concentration and monoculture.
When I met Larry Wooten, President of the NC Farm Bureau Federation, for the first time, he said to me that he wasn’t opposed to organics: “Consumers should have a choice,†he said. The leap that hasn’t been made in the Carolinas’ ag establishment is that farmers should have a choice, too; that there’s hope for sustaining, and renewing, our dwindling supply of farmers and farmland in the new sustainable ag paradigm.
That’s why CFSA is dedicated to being a Voice for Sustainable Ag, and we are putting more of our resources into the effort. When policy-makers hear the stories of sustainable ag success in our communities first-hand, when they learn about the income that local food systems can provide Carolina farmers, they want to get involved. There’s no stigma attached to organics anymore—the market ($17 billion in the US) and the consumer participation (52% of Americans bought organic food last year) and the buzz (“locavore†was Oxford’s “words of the year†in 2007, http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/) are impossible to ignore. So that’s why CFSA and its members are working on policy at the local level, to help more officials and opinion-shapers understand how to bring the benefits of sustainable local food systems to their communities.
Our website redesign, this blog, and even the new online food guide are all ultimately geared toward bringing more consumers, farmers and business into the sustainable food movement, and activating them to press for change. So spread the word about this site and CFSA, and help our collective voice grow louder.
To learn more about NCDA’s “Dairy Advantage†plan, visit http://www.agr.state.nc.us/markets/commodit/dairy/dairy_advantage.pdf.
For an interesting exchange on the prices paid to organic milk producers, check out this recent series of posts over at Grist, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/10/6475/66460
For the latest update on Monsanto’s efforts to upend the market for hormone-free milk, see http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=84227&m=1FNU326&c=mdxcfimlghpcovs. (This is actually a case of sinister motives!)
And if you are interested in the raw milk issue in North Carolina, keep tuned to these pages for an announcement of a bill to overrule NCDA’s requirement that raw milk sold for pet food be dyed gray.
Roland
12:01 pm on June 17th, 2008
Organic dairy will help to save the future children of our planet.
Organic farming will help to save our soil so we may grow food to feed our families in our country, save our farmers, feed our country.
The only way to get more organic farms is to keep pushing all of our family and friends, people standing in line, anyone who will listen to go organic. The more people demand it the more supply will have to be grown, but not until that point. In the mean time, maybe getting the politicians to taste the difference, see the difference in their skin tone, and over all health, then, applying the knowledge in Washington.
11:25 am on February 8th, 2012
Sorry but it is a conspiracy when Monsanto and the FDA are teamed up to stop the information of the Hormones in most milk. When Amish farmers are raided by Federal Agents for selling Raw Milk. When Raw Milk Co-ops across the country are raided and product which has never caused any sickness poured out onto the ground. Stop being so PC, the Large Agri-Milk industry and Monsanto lobbyists are not to be stopped unless you expose their real nefarious motives.