Why Moreganic
Augochlora Pura Green Metallic Bee foraging on Canada Thistle. The Goldfinches love thistle
Many of you are well familiar with our growing practices. No sprays ever, not even OMRI listed (certified for organic use) products. We cover all of our pest sensitive crops with insect netting. When it comes to fungal and bacterial disease, we let survival of the fittest play out or much more rarely terminate the crop. As far as weeds go, well… come have a look and you’ll see we certainly aren’t spraying herbicides.
You may wonder to yourselves, why in the world is it worth the trouble to move hundreds of sand bags and miles of covers around when you can just spray some concentrate of some extracted form of something that was once organic? Well, because human error is a huge factor when it comes to applying sprays, and Zac for one is very human. Not only can you mix a batch of spray that is too potent becoming phytotoxic to your plants, you can also spray when it is too windy, or too late in the day when non-targeted insects are already foraging. It isn’t only our concern for not applying sprays correctly that keeps us from spraying, we also don’t want to support the biochemical/pharmaceutical/big ag merger through purchasing sprays.
One of the most widely used sprays is called Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt). Bt is a soil dwelling bacterium that cause cry proteins to crystalize which rupture the guts of target and potentially non-target pests.
Oh, what’s that… potentially pathogenic to humans? I do believe this study would be in reference to Bt corn, which is corn that is genetically engineered to produce the Bt toxin. Why would you spray a plant when you could change it’s genetic make up to force it to produce a toxin? Oh, because of the potential pathogenicity to humans I reckon…GMO corn? That sounds like Monsanto…
Uh oh, we have some different interpretations here. It’s not like they are genetically modifying the heck out of Bt or anything, just the corn ya know.
Okay, so they are constantly genetically engineering new strains of this “super toxin” making it basically impossible to research any long term effects on humans or the environment. Other than the fact that it can kill non target insects as well as potentially become pathogenic to humans, what could go wrong?. Don’t worry, at least the USDA has a list of OMRI approved Bt to spray (thumbs up)
“Pleiotropy
Drugs
In pharmacology, pleiotropy includes all of a drug's actions other than those for which the agent was specifically developed. It may include adverse effects which are detrimental ones, but is often used to denote additional beneficial effects.Wikipedia”
Ah, yes. It’s always relieving when looking into a study about GMO food to find a pharmaceutical term for drug reactions when talking about “genetic transformation”. Did you all get the memo, it isn’t genetically modified or genetically engineered or bio engineered, it’s transgenic now… try to keep up with the lingo.
So, by using Bt, would one be directly or indirectly supporting the continued modification of plant genes and their mysterious effects on our health and the environment? I think so, considering Bayer/Monsanto are the patent holders. And that is why we don’t use Bt, we don’t want to harm non target pests, we don’t want to support biotech in the food system, and we have no idea of the long term effects as they continue to play around with the genetic composition of this soil dwelling bacteria.
There’s Bayer AG again, also known as good old Monsanto. They produce some copper fungicides too, another very popular spray used in organic growing. No, we don’t use that either.
The USDA sure doesn’t seem to mind us putting toxic chemicals onto our foods and into the environment. I wonder why that is?
Gasp! Lobbying?!? What, how could they….
LOL. Laugh out loud and also Land O’ Lakes. Who’s that I see? Bayer Ag!? PepsiCo? Will they take money from anyone?
Ah, yup. Nothing to see here. Just a history of big business being in bed with the federal agencies overseeing those big businesses. Shouldn’t be any kind of conflict of interest or anything here. Just eat your highly processed GMO corn based foods and drinks and don’t mind the use of environmentally unsound or potentially toxic agricultural practices, the USDA said it’s perfectly fine donchaknow.
Is it misleading to use the term “moreganic” since we are not certified organic? I personally don’t think so, and the NOP doesn’t seem to think so either, so long as it’s truthful. And people are welcome to make an appointment to come see our farm and ask us whatever questions they want. We try to use our social media and website to be totally transparent with our customers about how we grow and why we grow that way. Our top priority is the health of our community, and that means growing clean and nutrient dense food for people, as well as letting some weeds go to seed for the birds, and dealing with annoying insect netting to avoid spraying questionable chemicals. I’m not a scientist, I don’t go on debating myself about whether these new technologies are good or bad. I keep it simple and straight forward. There are bugs, there are weeds, and there are living things that exist by eating those bugs and weeds. There are things we can’t see that are living among us and in the soil. Our main concern is viewing all of these things as a whole, and keeping things as whole as possible, because to me that is organic.
So are we? We comply with the organic standards, even though we might not be audited or overseen by a federal agency (why should we they are complicit with big food?). We cycle resources by composting our crop residues and relying on compost (bought in professionally made) for our fertility requirements. We promote ecological balance by using intensive spacing to minimize our foot print, keeping much of the farm in grass to buffer gardens from erosion and provide habitat and forage for bees and birds. We conserve biodiversity by not spraying anything that would disrupt any life from the microbiology in the soil (fungicides) or the insects which feed the birds (insecticides) or the weeds that go into our compost (herbicides). Regulatory organizations don’t have to restrict anything we use, because all we use is compost. Nothing is processed, and no sanitizers are used on our vegetables.
Does that make us more than organic?
A marketing tool indeed. As large scale conventional farms can easily continue with the same practices of broad scale tillage, single use plastic mulch and drip tape, and large sprayers simply by buying the right seeds and spraying the OMRI listed sprays. They don’t have to focus on biology or biodiversity, that is just implied by the marketing of the organic label. Our role as small scale growers who deal directly with the consumer is to educate you all on where your food comes from. It can either come from someone you know and can ask questions to, or you can get it from the grocery store and trust the bought out overseeing agencies to have regulated the big food industries enough to actually accurately label food stuffs.
I say it all the time, I’m a simple farmer who barely graduated high school not a scientist. Do your own research about how foods are grown, what sprays are used, and you can determine what growing practices you want to support. We do our best to buy organic but surely eat some processed junk regularly. We’ve been raised to be disconnected from the foods we eat, and we will have to build a culture around growing, preserving, and supporting local food to move away from the large scale toxic agriculture and their by products (GMO crops for sugars and seed oils mostly).
Gee, what a cute innocent label. Thanks USDA for requiring some food retailers to tell us when food has been altered at a genetic level some of the time. That will be really helpful, I guess we’ll just assume they have been genetically altered unless otherwise stated then…
No cute label here, but at least it is in bold lettering. I’m sure the kids are reading that in the morning.
Well would you look at that, lucky charms can be eaten more than that grass fed ground beef from your farmers market without any question. But I did digress a bit, maybe I ought to hold out as I’m quite nearly getting to my next subject of nano foods which I do think will be quite interesting.
Laying down our reusable ground cover for winter squash. In the background you can see broccolini flowering, the bees love it.
They in. On the left you can see our crazy carrot patch that has become a wildflower haven. I have grown quite fond of the finch flocks both gold and red and find that they and many other birds love sow thistle, ragweed, and lambs quarters.
Naturally, they are covered up. The squash bugs have already moved into our first planting of squash so protection from the start is key.
Thank you all as always for the support. We couldn’t do it without you. Supporting any local agriculture is better than buying from a box store. Get to know your farmers, we’d like to get to know you.