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EDITOR’S VIEW
By Tim Linden
I Drank the Kool-Aid
For many, many years, I’ve been advis- ing family, friends and neighbors that they don’t have to worry about the pesticides on their fresh produce. I’ve told them the key to good health is to eat more fruit and vegetables. They don’t have to be organic; conventional is fine.
I still stick by that advice when the conversation is simply about personal health. Conventional produce is less ex- pensive than organic produce and it is still better than almost anything else you put in your body from diet foods to vitamins. If cost is your driver, pick up that conven- tional product and munch away. If you double your consumption, you will lose weight, your cholesterol levels will drop, you will feel better, and on average, you are going to live longer.
The conversation could stop there, as it has for me for most of my career.
But there is a much bigger conversa- tion that revolves around the health of our planet and the ability to continue to farm in the fertile valleys that have been home to our crops for the past 100 years. For the past half dozen years, I have been attending both the Organic Produce Summit and its sister show, the Organic Growers Summit (OGS). I’ve listened to session after session and learned a lot.
The evidence is overwhelming that the farming methods that have been used by most growers for the past 75 years aren’t great for our water supply, the ground and the planet at large. And there seems to be a relatively simple solution. Use
organic growing methods and adopt regen- erative farming practices. Those practices create better soil that locks carbon into the ground and ultimately improves our planet. The scientific community has said that using regenerative growing practices can go a long way in helping to solve our global climate change challenge, which is now undeniable.
I drank the Kool-Aid. My scales were tipped this year largely by two speakers at the most recent OGS: Grimmway Farms’ President Jeff Huckaby and Scott Park, a regenerative organic certified grower in Me- ridian, CA. At first glance, these two growers wouldn’t appear to have much in common. Grimmway Farms is considered the largest organic grower in the United States, and maybe the world, with about 60,000 organic acres in production, according to Huckaby. Park grows on 23 fields spread over 120 acres about 50 miles north of Sacramento. But both farmers are passionate about organic farming and claim their path to success started by paying attention to their soil. The same soil that can help our planet.
Park began farming 50 years ago and started organic farming about 40 years ago. He notes that when he began using biomass on his ground, added cover crops and dili- gently used rotation crops, he achieved very good results. His soil improved tremendously, water retention was great and yields went
up. He proclaimed that the concept works and that growing crops organically improved his bottom line. “It’s profitable. There are no gimmicks or tricks... We use only compost, seaweed and microorganisms.”
Huckaby began his organic journey soon after joining Grimmway Farms in 1988 when he was asked to manage the organic division. He revealed that in the very early years, Grimmway’s organic carrot fields were yielding only 25% of the volume of a conventional field. Two decades later, organic yields and quality are on par with conventional production. He said building the soil unlocked the secret to organic farming. The company now has a rotation plan that looks five years into the future and plots what each of its thousands upon thousands of acres will be growing. Carrots make the rota- tion once every three years with one of its other 65 organic crops filling in the other two years. Huckaby said each crop is designed to improve the soil and it does so. Huckaby added that organic sales account for 60% of the company’s total revenues.
These two growers have proven that organic production can work on both a large and small scale and be profitable. Maybe there are circumstance that it won’t work at all, but it seems unbeliev- able that only 1% of the farmed land in the United States is devoted to organic farming and regenerative practices. There needs to be a sea change if sequestering carbon in the soil is to put a dent in our climate problem.
Profit-minded growers will provide
us with what we want to eat. Consumers who can afford it need to take the leap to organics. Our planet is depending on it!
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